NAME

protocols - protocol name data base

SYNOPSIS

/etc/protocols

DESCRIPTION

The protocols file contains information regarding the known protocols used in the DARPA Internet. For each protocol a single line should be present with the following information:

official-protocol-name   protocol-number     aliases

Items are separated by any number of blanks and/or TAB characters. A `#' indicates the beginning of a comment; characters up to the end of the line are not interpreted by routines which search the file.

Protocol names may contain any printable character other than a field delimiter, NEWLINE, or comment character.

EXAMPLE

The following is a sample database:

#
# Internet (IP) protocols
#
ip      0       IP      # internet protocol, pseudo protocol number
icmp    1       ICMP    # internet control message protocol
ggp     3       GGP     # gateway-gateway protocol
tcp     6       TCP     # transmission control protocol
pup     12      PUP     # PARC universal packet protocol
udp     17      UDP     # user datagram protocol

FILES

/etc/protocols

SEE ALSO

getprotoent(3N)

BUGS

A name server should be used instead of a static file. A binary indexed file format should be available for fast access.