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CompTIA Network+ 1.4 CompTIA A+ Core 1 2.1 ISC2 CC 4.1 Cisco CCST Networking 1.5
TechKnowSurge Catalog Interactives Which Port Range?
InteractiveNetworkFree

Which Port Range?

Well-known, registered or dynamic? Sort each port number into its range.

⚑ Complete this interactive to capture a CTF flag worth 5 points.

About this interactive

One server can offer many services at once. TechKnowDJ's server delivers the website, answers the app's request for the song list, streams the music, and lets an administrator remote in. Traffic for all of them arrives at the same machine, so how does it know which service each request is for? That is what a port is for. Each service listens on a port number, and incoming traffic names the port it wants. Web traffic uses port 80 for plain HTTP and 443 for HTTPS, the secure version, which is what nearly all web traffic uses now. When a request arrives for port 443, the server hands it to the web service. Port numbers run from 0 to 65535, in three ranges: Well-known ports, 0 to 1023: already spoken for by standard services such as HTTP and HTTPS. You do not normally give one of these to a service of your own. Registered ports, 1024 to 49151: a service that is not one of the standard ones registers its port here, with IANA. (In practice many services use a port in this range without registering it.) Dynamic ports, 49152 to 65535, also called private or ephemeral: never registered, handed out for short-lived connections. The video rounds the registered range to about 1,000 to 49,000, and uses ports 81 and 82 as examples for TechKnowDJ's own services; 81 and 82 are well-known ports. A new service of your own would normally get a registered port instead.

What you'll learn

Aligned to

CompTIA Network+
1.4 Explain common networking ports, protocols, services, and traffic types.
CompTIA A+ Core 1
2.1 Compare and contrast Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) ports, protocols, and their purposes.
ISC2 CC
4.1 Understand network security
Cisco CCST Networking
1.5 Describe common network applications and protocols

Key terms

Port
A logical endpoint for communication in a network, identified by a number that specifies a particular service or application.
Well-Known Ports
Port numbers ranging from 0 to 1023 that are reserved for standard, widely used services and protocols.
Ephemeral Port
A temporary source port dynamically assigned by a client operating system for the duration of a connection, used to track multiple simultaneous sessions with the same server.
Hypertext Transfer Protocol
HTTP
An application-layer protocol that defines how web browsers and servers communicate to request and deliver web pages and other content, operating over TCP on port 80. HTTP transmits data in plaintext, which is why it has been largely replaced by HTTPS for sensitive content.
Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure
HTTPS
The encrypted version of HTTP that wraps web traffic in a TLS session, operating on TCP port 443, so that the data exchanged between a browser and a web server is confidential and cannot be read or modified by an eavesdropper. HTTPS is now the standard for all web traffic, indicated by the padlock icon in a browser.

Topics

Port Well Known Ports Ephemeral Port Interactive Categorize

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