There are three important similarities between TCP and SCTP: Both protocols require a connection between the communication partners, offer a mechanism for overload control, and are also reliable – so they both ensure that the packets arrive at the recipient without a loss. UDP does not provide this kind of guarantee due to a lack of confirmation messages. In return, however, UDP saves the user application from having to set its own data record markers (to mark packet boundaries), since it is not byte-oriented but message-oriented – an advantage that SCTP also offers.
Apart from this flexibility, which makes SCTP the ideal solution for voice transmission services like VoIP (Voice over IP), the protocol also scores points with the support of multi-streaming and multi-homing (fault tolerance instead of alternative hosts), which neither UDP nor TCP offer. In addition, the Stream Control Transmission Protocol, with the four-way handshake (including authentication cookie), and the mandatory verification tag in the header of each packet sent, ensures the highest security convenience of all three transport protocols.