Dynamic port use

[John Bailey]

Ethan Blanton wrote:
> Mayank Jain Nawal spake unto us the following wisdom:
<snip unneeded text>
>> I mean why user need to specify which port his application is using? What is 
>> the need to specify the Connection port number. 
> 
> That is the way network services work.  A client connects to a server
> on a particular port.  This is not something we can change.  I
> recommend again that you find a good textbook on TCP/IP networking.
> 
> Ethan

I would also note that the user doesn't *have* to specify anything when using
the major public services since we provide the correct port numbers by default
on all our protocols.

The ability to change the port is necessary on at least SILC, IRC, and XMPP, as
anyone can run these services privately and choose to use non-standard ports.
In these cases, the user *must* be aware that the service is running on a
non-standard port and the user *must* change the port setting on that account in
order to be able to connect to the service.  It's also necessary for some users
behind restrictive firewalls to be able to change the port in order to connect
to some outside services.  We have seen cases of this for at least AIM and Yahoo
that I can recall.

John

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