June 5, 1993 PROTOCOLS 5

### NAME

protocols - protocol name data base

### 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 hash (``#'') 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.

### FILES

```/etc/protocols`
  The protocols file resides in ```/etc`.

### SEE ALSO

getprotoent(3)

### HISTORY

The protocols file format appeared in 4.2BSD.

### BUGS

A name server should be used instead of a static file.