Method for Handling of an Inbound SCTP Packet at an SCTP Load Balancer and Tunneling Methodology

1 . A method for handling of an inbound Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) packet at an SCTP load balancer (SCTP LB) comprising:

installing, at the SCTP LB, an SCTP flow specification based on a request from a back-end server task, the SCTP flow specification including a tunneling mechanism;

receiving, at the SCTP LB, an SCTP packet;

determining, by the SCTP LB, the tunneling mechanism to use for the SCTP packet based on whether a single virtual machine SCTP endpoint is being used by multiple server tasks at a back-end server based on the installed SCTP flow specification;

tunneling the SCTP packet from the SCTP LB to the back-end server for further processing of the SCTP packet;

receiving, at the back-end server, the tunneled SCTP packet;

extracting, at the back-end server, information of a single SCTP endpoint from the tunneled SCTP packet; and

delivering a single copy of the SCTP packet to the single SCTP endpoint.

2 . The method of claim 1 wherein the tunneling mechanism comprises User Datagram Protocol (UDP) tunneling.

3 . The method of claim 1 wherein the tunneling mechanism comprises Internet Protocol (IP)-in-IP tunneling.

4 . The method of claim 2 wherein UDP tunneling includes encapsulating the received SCTP packet along with an IP header of the received SCTP packet.

5 . The method of claim 4 further comprising delivering the SCTP packet to the correct backend-server task in the form of a UDP packet.

6 . The method of claim 5 further comprising extracting, by the UDP tunnel handler, the complete IP-packet and identifying Local IP-end-point information.

7 . The method of claim 3 wherein IP-to-IP tunneling includes encapsulating the received SCTP packet along with an IP header of the received SCTP packet.

8 . The method of claim 7 further comprising forwarding the SCTP packet to the correct back-end server task.

9 . The method of claim 8 further comprising receiving, by a kernel of the back-end server, the encapsulated SCTP packet.

10 . The method of claim 9 further comprising extracting, by the kernel of the back-end server, the SCTP packet directly to an SCTP stack.

11 . An SCTP load balancer (SCTP LB) system comprising:

a processor;

an Internet Protocol (IP) network interface in communication with the processor;

a memory in communication with the processor and containing instructions which cause the processor to perform load balancing of Stream Connection Transport Protocol (SCTP) packets as an SCTP load balancer (LB);

a plurality of backend servers in communication with the SCTP LB;

the instructions further configured to cause the processor to perform steps comprising:

installing, at the SCTP LB, an SCTP flow specification based on a request from a back-end server task, the SCTP flow specification including a tunneling mechanism;

receiving, at the SCTP LB, an SCTP packet;

determining, by the SCTP LB, the tunneling mechanism to use for the SCTP packet based on whether a single virtual machine SCTP endpoint is being used by multiple server tasks at a back-end server based on the installed SCTP flow specification;

tunneling the SCTP packet from the SCTP LB to the back-end server for further processing of the SCTP packet;

receiving, at the back-end server, the tunneled SCTP packet;

extracting, at the back-end server, information of a single SCTP endpoint from the tunneled SCTP packet; and

delivering a single copy of the SCTP packet to the single SCTP endpoint.

12 . The system of claim 11 wherein the tunneling mechanism comprises User Datagram Protocol (UDP) tunneling.

13 . The system of claim 11 wherein the tunneling mechanism comprises Internet Protocol (IP)-in-IP tunneling.

14 . The system of claim 12 wherein UDP tunneling includes encapsulating the received SCTP packet along with an IP header of the received SCTP packet.

15 . The system of claim 14 wherein the SCTP packet is delivered to the correct backend-server task in the form of a UDP packet.

16 . The system of claim 15 wherein the UDP tunnel handler extracts the complete IP-packet and identifies Local IP-end-point information.

17 . The system of claim 13 wherein IP-to-IP tunneling includes encapsulating the received SCTP packet along with an IP header of the received SCTP packet.

18 . The system of claim 17 wherein the SCTP packet is forwarded to the correct back-end server task.

19 . The system of claim 18 wherein a kernel of the back-end server receives the encapsulated SCTP packet.

20 . The system of claim 19 the kernel of the back-end server extracts the SCTP packet directly to an SCTP stack.