Re: Guidance needed on well known ports

["Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@cs.columbia.edu>]

On Sat, 18 Mar 2006 10:44:13 -0800, "Christian Huitema"
<huitema@windows.microsoft.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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