Types of Port

By using ports, the computer is able to distinguish between all incoming traffic, including web pages and emails that flow to separate ports. Let’s now examine several port number ranges after determining the port number.

1. Well Known Port

• Known as system ports or well-known ports, ports 0 through 1023 are specifically linked to specific services.
• It is set aside for frequently utilised and specific services.
• Certain commonly used protocols and services, such as HTTP (port 80), HTTPS(port 443), DNS (port 53), and SSH (port 22), use it.

2. Registered Port

• The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority allows ports in the range of 1024 to 49151 to be registered for a particular purpose.
• These ports are referred to as registered ports.These are utilised by fewer apps or services, but they are utilised by those that need the particular port.
• Organisations can request any specific port number in this range from IANA (Internet Assigned Number Authority).

3. Dynamic Port

• Unassigned ports, often known as dynamic or ephemeral ports, are those that range from 49152 to 65535 and can be used for any kind of service.
• It is employed for transient or fleeting connections.
• It can be utilised by any process and is not registered nor assigned.

Network port facilitates in identifying application or service running in browser/computer in same fashion as IP address does. Looking into an analogical situation – Supposedly you own a building. The street address corresponds to IP address. Also, the way there is a port number, each building also has a building number. Port numbers are also of different types and have unique numbers. The ports co-exist within an IP address because each and every service has its unique port. Top firms like Google or MSN use well-known ports (0 to 10231) for their services; Certain specific functions are assigned registered ports(1024 to 49151) when requested; There are also private or dynamic ports(49152 to 65535) which can be used by anyone who wishes for private servers and temporary purposes. It is highly advisable for you to know port numbers. You’ll have good control of your software if you know it. Applications should always be open for them to work since they use specific ports. While closing them can certainly improve your port security, it is upon you to keep a particular port open or close. You may also open or close a particular port if one of your apps aren’t able to get connected to Internet. Some ports are blocked by firewalls, so you may have to manually allow it to bypass them when needed.

The need for a port number is discussed for now. But, who assigns a unique port number for different services/applications ? A web browser when connected to a web server, a port in range (49152- 65535) is self-allocated by web browser, which is called an ephemeral port. In image shown underneath, all unique services are assigned a unique port number, which you can see on 5th tuple on local address. Try netstat on your command to get details.

Note – Client port numbers are dynamically assigned, and can be reused once session is closed.

A port is the logical address of any protocol; alternatively, we might think of a port as a special door for each protocol, through which all packets are routed. Another way to put it is that every protocol has a mailbox, or box, where every protocol packet is dropped. Subsequently, the recipient will access that packet and peruse the content sent by the sender. Every protocol has a port, which is a specific line used for packet transfer.

In this article, we are going to discuss TCP/IP Port as well as the types of TCP/IP Port.