Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!kramden.acf.nyu.edu!brnstnd From: brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: Need a list of in-use higher socket numbers Message-ID: <4812:Oct902:23:5090@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> Date: 9 Oct 90 02:23:50 GMT References: <2060@oucsace.cs.OHIOU.EDU> Organization: IR Lines: 13 Past the low-number range allocated by the IETF, there are no real standards. BSD systems define IPPORT_USERRESERVED in , 50000 on some machines and 5000 on others; if you ask the system for a port by binding to port 0, you'll get something lower than USERRESERVED. So for maximum portability, you should pick a number above 50000. It would be better if there were a central authority that allocated nonstandard ports; I believe the IETF has refused to do this. Another solution would be to have each machine translate services into ports, through some sort of yellow pages; but this doesn't solve the namespace management problem. ---Dan