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NAME | DESCRIPTION | FILES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON


PROTOCOLS(5)                  Linux Programmer's Manual                  PROTOCOLS(5)

NAME         top

       protocols - the protocols definition file

DESCRIPTION         top

       This file is a plain ASCII file, describing the various DARPA internet
       protocols that are available from the TCP/IP subsystem.  It should be
       consulted instead of using the numbers in the ARPA include files, or, even
       worse, just guessing them.  These numbers will occur in the protocol field of
       any IP header.

       Keep this file untouched since changes would result in incorrect IP packages.
       Protocol numbers and names are specified by the IANA (Internet Assigned
       Numbers Authority).

       Each line is of the following format:

              protocol number aliases ...

       where the fields are delimited by spaces or tabs.  Empty lines are ignored.
       If a line contains a hash mark (#), the hash mark and the part of the line
       following it are ignored.

       The field descriptions are:

       protocol
              the native name for the protocol.  For example ip, tcp, or udp.

       number the official number for this protocol as it will appear within the IP
              header.

       aliases
              optional aliases for the protocol.

       This file might be distributed over a network using a network-wide naming
       service like Yellow Pages/NIS or BIND/Hesiod.

FILES         top

       /etc/protocols
              The protocols definition file.

SEE ALSO         top

       getprotoent(3)

       http://www.iana.org/assignments/protocol-numbers

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of release 3.23 of the Linux man-pages project.  A
       description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found
       at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

Linux                                 2008-09-23                         PROTOCOLS(5)