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For Linux that's true. But Microsoft never added SCTP to Windows; not being beholden to Microsoft and older OS must have been part of the calculus?
by lttlrck 2y ago
For Linux that's true. But Microsoft never added SCTP to Windows; not being beholden to Microsoft and older OS must have been part of the calculus?
- skissane 2y ago> But Microsoft never added SCTP to Windows Windows already has an in-kernel QUIC implementation (msquic.sys), used for SMB/CIFS and in-kernel HTTP. I don’t think it is accessible from user-space - I believe user-space code uses a separate copy of the same QUIC stack that runs in user-space (msquic.dll), but there is no reason in-principle why Microsoft couldn’t expose the kernel-mode implementation to user space
- astrange 2y agoNo one ever uses SCTP. It's pretty unclear to me why any OSes do include it; free OSes seem to like junk drawers of network protocols even though they add to the security surface in kernel land.
- kelnos 2y agoDoes anyone even build SCTP support directly into the kernel? Looks like Debian builds it as a module, which I'm sure I never have and never will load. Security risk seems pretty minimal there. (And if someone can somehow coerce me into loading it, I have bigger problems.)
- jeroenhd 2y agoLinux and FreeBSD have had it for ages. Anything industrial too. Solaris, QNX, Cisco IOS. SCTP is essential for certain older telco protocols and in certain protocols developed for LTE it was added. End users probably don't use it much, but the harsware their connections are going through will speak SCTP at some level.
- rjsw 2y agoI added it to NetBSD and build it into my kernels, it isn't enabled by default though. Am part way through adding NAT support for it to the firewall.
- supriyo-biswas 2y agoThe telecom sector uses SCTP in lots of places.
- spookie 2y agoAnd most of those protocols can be disabled under sysctl.conf.
- lstodd 2y ago4g/LTE runs on it. So you use it too, via your phone.
- astrange 2y agoHuh, didn't know that. But iOS doesn't support it, so it's not needed on the AP side even for wifi calling.
- j1elo 2y agoSCTP is exactly how you establish a data communication link with the very modern WebRTC protocol stack (and is rebranded to "WebRTC Data Channels"). Granted, it is SCTP-over-UDP. But still. So yes, SCTP is under the covers getting a lot more use than it seems, still today. However all WebRTC implementations usually bring their own userspace libraries to implement SCTP, so they don't depend on the one from the OS.