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TUNNEL Profile (BEEP)
The TUNNEL Profile for BEEP (Blocks Extensible Exchange Protocol) enables the creation of application-layer tunnels over TCP. This facilitates encapsulating various application protocols transparently, allowing peer-to-peer communication, protocol multiplexing, and flexible data flow management within the BEEP framework. It is a versatile mechanism mainly employed in network services and security contexts where tunneling is required without developing new transport protocols..
The TUNNEL Profile is developed within the framework of BEEP, a protocol framework designed for building application protocols with features like framing, multiplexing, and channel management over a single transport connection. The TUNNEL profile extends BEEP's capabilities by enabling peers to form an application-layer tunnel, which essentially acts like a virtual point-to-point link between two endpoints operating over the existing BEEP session.
This tunnel allows encapsulated application data, potentially from diverse protocols, to traverse a single TCP connection in an efficient, multiplexed manner. It supports multiple logical communication streams within one connection, reducing overhead and simplifying the management of transport sessions. Encapsulation via tunneling also aids in working through NAT devices and firewalls facilitating application-layer protocol negotiations and data transfer.
TUNNEL Profile operates exclusively over TCP, leveraging BEEP's framing features to maintain reliable, ordered delivery of encapsulated data streams. Because BEEP and its profiles are designed to be transport independent within TCP, SCTP is generally not used here. The tunneling capability is instrumental for protocol bridging, firewall traversal, and dynamic network services where normal protocol operation is limited by network constraints.