Kernel SCTP and DCCP?
Taylor R Campbell <[email protected]> Mon, 20 Jul 2026 22:16:18 +0000
| Newsgroups | gmane.os.netbsd.devel.network |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
What applications either do, or reasonably could, use SCTP and DCCP in the NetBSD kernel? How do we test them? These are very large code bases that have been off by default for a long time, and appear to have had essentially no maintenance (other than build fixes and typo fixes) since 2019. But I don't know what they would be useful for, or even how to use them. - I know SCTP is used by webrtc, but as far as I know all webrtc implementations just use userland SCTP encapsulated in (DTLS over) UDP, so the kernel SCTP implementation is not relevant. - I know (in principle) SCTP is used in the control planes of mobile telecoms but I don't know how I would even interact with or simulate such a network if I don't work at a mobile telecom company. - We appear to have zero userland programs, or automatic tests, that mention SCTP and DCCP at all, except for kdump(1) and netstat(1) output formatters. - We appear to have no documentation on the wiki or in the guide about how to do anything with SCTP or DCCP. If I had to fix a vulnerability in it, I wouldn't even know where to start testing it to make sure I didn't break something. Linux seems to have dropped DCCP in version 6.16. FreeBSD seems not to have ever had kernel DCCP at all. Is this large code base worth the maintenance costs? If it is useful, can the folks for whom it is useful suggest how to keep it exercised, and contribute automatic tests for the basic functionality?