CODEWITHSUNDEEP
socketsnetwork-programmingport
Sivaprasanna Sethuraman
Sivaprasanna Sethuraman

Reputation: 4132

All the ports do the same job?

I've started learning Computer Networking now. I've been gathering information about ports. When I searched on the internet, I could see that there were so many ports. I just want to know the use/function of ports and whether they all do the same work. Also, I see the port 8080 in most places. Is there any specific reason behind this(using 8080)?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 104

Answers (3)

Paulo Bu
Paulo Bu

Reputation: 29794

Ports, along with IP addresses form the basic endpoint of a TCP network connection. Valid port number ranges from 0 to 65535 (16 bits) and they all do the same job.

Now they are some well-known services used on the Internet so often that it has become such a good practice to make them listen to a well-know port. Most of these services are collected in the IANA web page. You will find there that 8080 port number is mostly used by web servers and proxies (basic operation you do on internet, browsing).

More deeply, a port is a transport layer concept for communicating with a specific process in the target machine (ie: the host pointed by IP address). This is what makes possible for multiple services being run at the same host without conflicting.

A normal TCP/IP connection has two endpoints each one consisting of the tuple (IP address, port number).

You can find more information at the Wikipedia page for TCP and there are many good books on the subject. My personal favorite: Andrew S. Tanenbaum - Computer Networks

Hope this helps!

Upvotes: 3

Bradley Uffner
Bradley Uffner

Reputation: 16991

Every port is identical to every other one. The only difference is what process is attached and listening on each port. Some ports have become standardized, like 80 for http traffic. If IP addresses are like phone numbers, then ports are like extensions.

Upvotes: 2

A B
A B

Reputation: 4148

The list of ports commonly in use is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_TCP_and_UDP_port_numbers

This URL states that port 8080 is TYPICALLY used if the web service is a proxy or caching server or is run as the non-root user - using port 8080 as non root would be much more secure than the default.

However, 8080 can be used simply if port 80 is in use:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070309074112AADBBmL

Upvotes: 0

Related Questions