Henri and Lee- how do you ever know all that! I looked at the IANA website. It gave me an all new outlook on the Internet. O my, I need a lot more time and sanity to dig into that. So I closed it quickly and saved it for the future!! (If there be any for me!) But at least I have an inkling how this strange numbering came about. Marta On Aug 19, 2004, at 22:54, Henri Yandell wrote:
> > In addition to this, the reason is probably age. > > Older stuff tends to use lower port numbers. Most of the backbone of > the > Internet proper are all under 100, with occasional variants being over, > often for use with SSL (IMAP/SSL, POP/SSL, HTTP/SSL aka HTTPS). > > There's also a security feature on all *nix boxes, including OS X. > Ports > under 1025 may only be opened by the super-user (root), so only the > machine admin can start a webserver etc. > > Once that space of port numbers got filled up, I suspect people started > randomly grabbing numbers. For example, we use 9999 and 9998 at work > because someone plucked them out of thin air one afternoon :) I suspect > that a company would then goto the IANA, ask for those numbers, be told > "NO", and get whatever number was nearby that sounded good. > > So the reason is history, and then random-evolution. > > Hen > > On Thu, 19 Aug 2004, Lee Larson wrote: > >> On Aug 19, 2004, at 8:04 PM, Marta Edie asked: >> >>> But there is one question I have: who gives the numbers to these >>> ports? iTunes is 3689, Printer sharing 631 and 515, remote log-in 22 >>> etc-. Why these wild numbers without any , at least to me, reason? >> >> There's a group called IANA (Internet Assigned Number Authority) that >> does it. >> >> <http://www.iana.net/> >> >> >> >> | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will >> | be August 24. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. >> | List posting address: <mailto:macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu> >> | List Web page: <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup> >> > > > > | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will > | be August 24. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. > | List posting address: <mailto:macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu> > | List Web page: <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup> | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be August 24. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. | List posting address: <mailto:macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu> | List Web page: <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>
