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.\" Copyright (c) 1995 Martin Schulze <joey@infodrom.north.de>
.\"
.\" This is free documentation; you can redistribute it and/or
.\" modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
.\" published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of
.\" the License, or (at your option) any later version.
.\"
.\" The GNU General Public License's references to "object code"
.\" and "executables" are to be interpreted as the output of any
.\" document formatting or typesetting system, including
.\" intermediate and printed output.
.\"
.\" This manual is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
.\" but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
.\" MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
.\" GNU General Public License for more details.
.\"
.\" You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
.\" License along with this manual; if not, see
.\" <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
.\"
.\" 1995-10-18  Martin Schulze  <joey@infodrom.north.de>
.\"	* first released
.\" 2002-09-22  Seth W. Klein  <sk@sethwklein.net>
.\"     * protocol numbers are now assigned by the IANA
.\"
.TH PROTOCOLS 5 2012-08-05 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
.SH NAME
protocols \- protocols definition file
.SH DESCRIPTION
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).
.\" .. by the DDN Network Information Center.

Each line is of the following format:

.RS
.I protocol number aliases ...
.RE

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:
.TP
.I protocol
the native name for the protocol.
For example
.IR ip ,
.IR tcp ,
or
.IR udp .
.TP
.I number
the official number for this protocol as it will appear within the IP
header.
.TP
.I aliases
optional aliases for the protocol.
.LP
This file might be distributed over a network using a network-wide
naming service like Yellow Pages/NIS or BIND/Hesiod.
.SH FILES
.TP
.I /etc/protocols
The protocols definition file.
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR getprotoent (3)

.UR http://www.iana.org\:/assignments\:/protocol-numbers
.UE