/*
 * Copyright 2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.
 * DO NOT ALTER OR REMOVE COPYRIGHT NOTICES OR THIS FILE HEADER.
 *
 * This code is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
 * under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 only, as
 * published by the Free Software Foundation.  Sun designates this
 * particular file as subject to the "Classpath" exception as provided
 * by Sun in the LICENSE file that accompanied this code.
 *
 * This code is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
 * ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
 * FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License
 * version 2 for more details (a copy is included in the LICENSE file that
 * accompanied this code).
 *
 * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License version
 * 2 along with this work; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,
 * Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.
 *
 * Please contact Sun Microsystems, Inc., 4150 Network Circle, Santa Clara,
 * CA 95054 USA or visit www.sun.com if you need additional information or
 * have any questions.
 */

/**
 * A Java API for Stream Control Transport Protocol.
 *
 * <P> The Stream Control Transport Protocol (SCTP) is a reliable,
 * message-oriented, transport protocol existing at an equivalent level with UDP
 * (User Datagram Protocol) and TCP (Transmission Control Protocol). SCTP is
 * session oriented and an association between the endpoints must be established
 * before any data can be transmitted.
 *
 * <P> SCTP has direct support for multi-homing, meaning than an endpoint may be
 * represented by more than one address and each address may be used for sending
 * and receiving data, thus providing network redundancy. The connection between
 * two endpoints is referred to as an association between those endpoints.
 * Endpoints can exchange a list of addresses during association setup. One
 * address is designated as the primary address, this is the default address that
 * the peer will use for sending data. A single port number is used across the
 * entire address list at an endpoint for a specific session.
 *
 * <P> SCTP is message based. I/O operations operate upon messages and message
 * boundaries are preserved. Each association may support multiple independant
 * logical streams. Each stream represents a sequence of messages within a single
 * association and streams are independant of one another, meaning that stream
 * identifiers and sequence numbers are included in the data packet to allow
 * sequencing of messages on a per-stream basis.
 *
 * <P> This package provides two programming model styles. The one-to-one style
 * supported by {@link com.sun.nio.sctp.SctpChannel} and {@link
 * com.sun.nio.sctp.SctpServerChannel}, and the one-to-many
 * style supported by {@link com.sun.nio.sctp.SctpMultiChannel}.
 * The semantics of the one-to-one style interface are very similar to TCP.
 * An {@code SctpChannel} can only control one SCTP association. The
 * semantics of the one-to-many style interface are very similar to UDP. An
 * {@code SctpMutliChannel} can control multiple SCTP associations.
 *
 * <P> Applications can send and receive per-message ancillary information through
 * {@link com.sun.nio.sctp.MessageInfo}. For example, the stream number that
 * the message it is to be sent or received from. The SCTP stack is event driven
 * and applications can receive notifications of certain SCTP events by invoking
 * the {@code receive} method of the SCTP channel with an appropriate {@link
 * com.sun.nio.sctp.NotificationHandler notification handler}.
 *
 * <P> The SCTP protocol is defined by
 * <A HREF="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4960">RFC4960</A>, and the optional
 * extension for <I>Dynamic Address Reconfiguration</I> is defined by
 * <A HREF="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5061">RFC5061</A>.
 *
 * @since 1.7
 */

package com.sun.nio.sctp;
