Port (computer networking)

In computer networking, a port is a communication endpoint. At the software level within an operating system, a port is a logical construct that identifies a specific process or a type of network service. A port is uniquely identified by a number, the port number, associated with the combination of a transport protocol and the network IP address. Port numbers are 16-bit unsigned integers.

The most common transport protocols that use port numbers are the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the User Datagram Protocol (UDP). The port completes the destination and origination addresses of a message within a host to point to an operating system process. Specific port numbers are reserved to identify specific services so that an arriving packet can be easily forwarded to a running application. For this purpose, port numbers lower than 1024 identify the historically most commonly used services and are called the well-known port numbers. Higher-numbered ports are available for general use by applications and are known as ephemeral ports.

Ports provide a multiplexing service for multiple services or multiple communication sessions at one network address. In the client–server model of application architecture, multiple simultaneous communication sessions may be initiated for the same service.