We deal with application and service issues on a daily basis. Normally the problems relate to applications not performing as expected, hanging or crashing. However, every so often someone will ask us what network port a service is using. Unless we are talking about one of the well known services such as SMTP, FTP, HTTP, RDP, LDAP, basic RPC etc, the ports being used are potentially subject to change. That does make life a little more challenging – but it’s nothing that we can’t figure out using some simple tools.
When considering network port numbers, the numbers are divided into three ranges: the Well Known ports, the Registered ports and the Dynamic (Private) ports. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is responsible for the global coordination of the port assignments. The Well Known port range is from 0 – 1023, Registered ports run from 1024 – 49151, and the Dynamic ports run from 49152 – 65535.
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