New Internet Protocals for Multimedia Transmission

Abstract

This chapter will introduce three new IETF transport layer protocols in support of multimedia data transmission and discuss their usage. First, the stream control transmission protocol (SCTP) will be described; this protocol was originally designed for telephony signaling across the Internet, but it is in fact broadly applicable. Second, UDP-Lite (an even simpler UDP) will be explained; this is an example of a small protocol change that opened a large can of worms. The chapter concludes with an overview of the datagram congestion control protocol (DCCP), a newly devised IETF protocol for the transmission of unreliable (typically real-time multimedia) data streams.