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Re: Guidance needed on well known ports

2006-03-18 12:22:43
On Sat, 18 Mar 2006 10:44:13 -0800, "Christian Huitema"
<huitema(_at_)windows(_dot_)microsoft(_dot_)com> wrote:

   1. Are well known ports archaic?  If so, can we request that the
IANA
      do away with the distinction?

I don't know whether I would use the word "archaic", but the distinction
between < 1024 and >= 1024 is certainly Unix-specific. In the Windows
operating systems, the port range 1-1023 is not special. Some Windows OS
services use low port numbers, but not all. UPNP, for example, uses
ports 1900 and 2500; the RPC applications use dynamic port numbers.

A more interesting question is this: what are the odds that a user
process will accidentally grab the port number before the system
process gets to it?  The notion of a "privileged" port number is
certainly preposterous; that said, putting services in a range that
ordinary applications tend not to use has its merits.

                --Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

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