The disclosure is directed to techniques for supporting failover between different network protocol addressing families in a wireless communication network. The techniques may be implemented in a mobile wireless communication device. A logical interface selects a physical interface for access to the network in response to a request from an application module. The network access request issued by the application module need not specify a network protocol type. Instead, upon selection of the physical interface, the logical interface notifies the application of the network protocol type associated with the physical interface. The logical interface may select a physical interface corresponding to a particular network protocol when available, based on connection preferences specified by the application module or a global setting within the device. If a physical interface corresponding to the network protocol is not available, however, the logical interface selects a physical interface corresponding to a different network protocol.