Understanding Protocol Families

A protocol family is a group of logical properties within an interface configuration. Protocol families include all the protocols that make up a protocol suite. To use a protocol within a particular suite, you must configure the entire protocol family as a logical property for an interface. The protocol families include common and not-so-common protocol suites.

This topic contains the following sections:

• Common Protocol Suites
• Other Protocol Suites

Common Protocol Suites

Junos OS protocol families include the following common protocol suites:

• Inet—Supports IP protocol traffic, including OSPF, BGP, and Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP).
• Inet6—Supports IPv6 protocol traffic, including RIP for IPv6 (RIPng), IS-IS, and BGP.
• ISO—Supports IS-IS traffic.
• MPLS—Supports MPLS.

Note: Junos OS security features are flow-based—meaning the device sets up a flow to examine the traffic. Flow-based processing is not supported for ISO or MPLS protocol families.

Other Protocol Suites

In addition to the common protocol suites, Junos protocol families sometimes use the following protocol suites:

• ccc—Circuit cross-connect (CCC).
• mlfr-uni-nni—Multilink Frame Relay (MLFR) FRF.16 user-to-network network-to-network (UNI NNI).
• mlfr-end-to-end—Multilink Frame Relay end-to-end.
• mlppp—Multilink Point-to-Point Protocol.
• tcc—Translational cross-connect (TCC).
• tnp—Trivial Network Protocol. This Juniper Networks proprietary protocol provides communication between the Routing Engine and the device's packet forwarding components. Junos OS automatically configures this protocol family on the device's internal interfaces only.

Related Topics

• Junos OS Feature Support Reference for SRX Series and J Series Devices
• Understanding Interface Logical Properties
• Configuring the Protocol Family in the Junos Network Interfaces Configuration Guide