Different websites uses different ports, like Codecademy uses localhost:8000 in its AngularJS and Ruby On Rails tutorials. So, I want to know what is the use of this 8000 in localhost:8000. Thanks in advance :-)
This is not specific to one framework, it's a much lower level. From Wikipedia:
In computer networking, a port is a software construct serving as a communications endpoint in a computer's host operating system. A port is always associated with an IP address of a host and the protocol type of the communication. It completes the destination or origination address of a communications session. A port is identified for each address and protocol by a 16-bit number, commonly known as the port number.
Specific, well-known port numbers are often used to identify specific applications and services. Of the thousands of enumerated ports, 1024 well-known port numbers are reserved by convention to identify specific service types on a host. The protocols that primarily use ports are the Transport Layer protocols, such as the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) of the Internet Protocol Suite.
In the client-server model of application architecture, ports are used to provide a multiplexing service on each port number that network clients connect to for service initiation, after which communication is reestablished on another connection-specific port number.
I assume, there's a task runner like grunt or gulp serving the page via BrowserSync (or similar). They use a different port than 80 to not interfere with an already occupied port by a local web server (apache, nginx,...).
This is just a port which rails is listening to. It depends on how you configure your rails server, and, IMHO does not mean anything useful. Sometimes you have to assign service to a different port because default port is occupied by some other service. Sometimes it is done by security reasons, so the hacker from outside world has to know the port you are using. But it's actually not very hard to know
Just to add to what the others have said: all network communications require an ip address (which can be got from a domain name like www.google.com) and a port number. However, if a port number is not supplied then the http server uses the default: this is usually port 80. So, if you were to go to "localhost" without a port, you are effectively saying "localhost:80". Your computer probably doesn't know what to do with this. If you say "localhost:8000", and there's a rails server there, then it will handle the request.
Related
I'm learning networking and sockets and there's something I don't understand. I often heard about "TCP ports"
But I think ports are related to the application layer (80 for HTTP servers for example).
So why don't you say "applications ports" ? Why port seems associated with TCP layer (it should be associated with an higher layer) ?
For me ports have nothing to do with TCP protocol
Thanks
Your understanding is incorrect, and you need to clarify this point before moving on to other networking concepts.
Port is a fundamental concept of TCP.
TCP is a bidirectional communication protocol between two endpoints (Source and Destination), which are identified by 2 things: IP address and Port. TCP is meant to extend the IP protocol (which identifies hosts only by IP address) by adding the Port and allowing multiple communication endpoints to exist for a single IP address.
In fact TCP packets (sent over the wire) encapsulate IP packets, but add some extra information on top of IP, information like the Port and some transmission control flags. This is why people often use the term TCP/IP.
On top of TCP/IP, people have built other protocols, like HTTP.
An HTTP packet (or request) consists of multiple TCP/IP packets exchanged between the client and the server. HTTP uses TCP/IP, and all packets sent with HTTP are TCP/IP packets. HTTP commonly uses the TCP port 80, however it can run on any other port without issues.
Also, any other application level protocol can be configured to use port 80.
Ports are associated with application level protocols only by convention. Similarly, SSH is commonly configured on port 22, but can be used on any other port.
I don't know if there is a official definition of you people say it like this :)
This is only my idea, maybe it will help you :)
Because applications are using 2 protocols:
TCP and UDP and people to express both the using protocol of an application and the port, they say TCP:80 or UDP:5000 (torrent example)
For example HTTPS can run over any reliable stream transport protocol. Normally that's TCP, but it could also be SCTP. It is NOT expected to run over UDP.
So you can say HTTPS:443 or TCP:443 referring at the HTTPS discussion of course.
They guy that you are talking to, understands from the start that HTTPS uses TCP protocol and it is on 443 port.
Combining the port number and the TCP/UDP you "create" the name of the assigned protocol, not vice-versa.
Eq:
TCP:80 = HTTP
TCP:23 = Telnet
UDP:220 = IMAP
You don't say HTTP:80 is TCP. The TCP port 80 is known as HTTP.
For a list or protocols and ports see: http://www.pearsonitcertification.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1868080
On my package 1, under the info it says (source)54841 > 80(destination). May I know what are these terms mean and why these particular ports are being used. i know that for tcp, they uses 80 for destination port. but is there a particular reason? Thank you
In fact, there are two questions with two different answers.
Firstly, you have to be exact: The port definition is part of the Internet Proctocol (commonly called TCP/IP) application layer. The tcp protocol is a protocol of the underlying transport layer, so the definition / use of port 80 is not defined for tcp, but rather for the http application protocol (while the actual port usage takes place in the transport layer).
Regarding the destination port, you nearly gave the answer yourself: For well defined application protocols, there were defined well known ports. The list is maintained by IANA (https://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-port-numbers/service-names-port-numbers.xhtml). Usually, the ports were defined in the privileged low number range (up to 1024). When that range became to full, there were also higher port numbers assigned.
The reasoning behind the well defined port numbers is, that services can only listen on specific ports, and if the numbers were known by convention, you had to memorize them along with the server adress. For your example, HTTP, that means, that if you start a request for http://www.example.com, your browser (or other software) knows that http usually uses port 80, connects to that port to get the html page. You can still run http servers on different ports (say, 12345), but than, the user had to enter http://www.example.com:12345 to reach the server. You can see that using well defined ports is helpful here.
For the source port, it is a completely different story. As transport layer connections usually use ports for multiplexing/demultiplexing on both source and destination, every connection must also have a source port. The lower port numbers can not be used for this purpose, as on one hand, they are often used for listening services, and on the other hand, their usage is privileged on some operating systems, so normal users cannot use them at all. For this reasons, IANA assigned the port range from 49152 to 65535 (2^15+2^14 to 2^(16−1)) for that purpose. Most operating systems will select one of this ports for outgoing connections source port. The selection is, however, short lived - when the connection is closed, the port is released, and the next connection can use an other port.
I am trying to program a script to interface two applications, so I need to understand a few basic concepts, if someone could please help me grasp them:
When an application's manual says: This app listens to localhost:9763, it means it receives live data from the same machine on port number 9763. Is this correct?
So, if an application's manual says: Listen on UDP port 6004, it means I have to specify localhost:6004 similar to the first point?
Or does the first point (localhost:9763) imply that TCP/IP is being used, but the second point is on UDP?
Generally speaking, if an app says it is listening on a particular port and doesn't specify TCP or UDP, that usually means TCP. If you're not sure, you can probably figure it out based on what that particular app does and how it does it.
I'm using a real machine (hp procurve) for my project, I need to send message of other protocol format, OSPF for instance, instead of flows, from controller side to OpenFlow switch through socket(by specifying ip address and port of the OF switch).
But everytime I try to do this, I get "Connection refused" error message, I guess that it might be that the port on OpenFlow switch I'm sending the message to is not listening, so I think I might need to use the same port for the sending which OpenFlow switch uses to talk to the controller, like the port 51067 in the log info :
Switch:192.168.1.11:51067 is connected to the Controller
My question is, how do I retrieve the port information on the controller side, since it is changing every time I restart it? I couldn't find this information.
Or am I going the wrong direction that I need to go another way around instead of sending the message using socket?
Thanks a lot in advance, any suggestions will be appreciated.
jonesir
I think you are misunderstanding the nature of networking ports, protocol numbers, and protocols such as OSPF. Let me clear those up:
Port numbers: Usually, there is exactly one application listening on a single port: The operating system/networking stack checks each packet of certain types (e.g. TCP or UDP) for the port number and then passes the packet to the application that registered itself for that specific port. If the application cannot handle the received packet then usually it will just ignore it or log an error.
Aside: It is possible for two applications to communicate on the same port only if you put some sort of multiplexing application before both (usually a reverse proxy, possibly a TCPMUX application). This multiplexing application would take incoming packets, determine what type of packet it is and then pass it to the correct application.
Protocol numbers: The protocol number is a field inside an IP packet that tells the networking stack what type of data is contained inside. For example, TCP is protocol 6, ICMP is 1, and OSPF is 89.
OF switches: Now, logically an OF switch consists of two components: 1) the switching fabric (which includes the physical ports and OF flow tables), and 2) a separate physical port to for out-of-band control, with several applications running behind it. One of these applications is the OpenFlow application, which in your case happens to listen on port 51067. But in real switches, other applications might also be running on different ports, e.g. a web interface running on port 80 for maintenance etc.
OSPF: If you now wanted to talk to the application serving the web interface, you'd send a TCP packet with destination port 80 from your controller to the switch. Similarly, if you'd like to install a new flow, you'd send an TCP packet with port 51067 in your case. OSPF is quite different, as it directly uses IP packets and does not use port numbers. To process an OSPF packet, an application needs to use a raw socket to process the incoming IP packets that have protocol number 89, and skip all others. See also the raw manpage here. This will already be built into your OF switch.
Thus, if you want to send an OSPF packet to the OF switch (and your OF switch supports OSPF on the separate physical port!), you'd just send an OSPF IP packet to the switch's IP address (192.168.1.11), no port needed!
Note that the separate physical port might not support all of the features of the other ports on the OF switch, as they are not intended for the same uses.
I am attempting to establish a connection between two computers using MSDN codes:
Client code:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms737591(v=vs.85).aspx
Server code:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms737593(v=vs.85).aspx
These codes run perfectly on a local network, but my intention is to establish a connection over the internet, where both computers are behind routers. I know port-forwarding is a viable solution. But I just don't know how.
For example, does even the client need port-forwarding, not just the server?
Further more, I am unable to properly configure my router to port-forward. Its model is Level One WBR-3407a. I tried this guide:
http://portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/LevelOne/WBR-3407a/defaultguide.htm
But it didn't work. As you may note, this guide doesn't anywhere in it specify what port to use? is it possible to port-forward without specifying which port to forward?!
You need to configure port forwarding on the router to which the "server" is connected, and yes, you do need to specify a port (there's an exception, but let's not worry about it now). You typically wouldn't need port forwarding on the router to which the client computer connects.
Looking at the MSDN code you linked, you need to port forward port 27015, so on the router for your server, you want to add port forwarding entries for incoming TCP connections on port 27015 and to forward them to the IP address of the computer running the server, also on port 27015.
For future reference, this question is more appropriate for SuperUser or, less likely, for ServerFault.