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The TCP/IP Guide

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Table Of Contents  The TCP/IP Guide
 9  TCP/IP Lower-Layer (Interface, Internet and Transport) Protocols (OSI Layers 2, 3 and 4)
      9  TCP/IP Transport Layer Protocols
           9  Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP)
                9  TCP/IP Transport Layer Protocol (TCP and UDP) Addressing: Ports and Sockets

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TCP/IP Client (Ephemeral) Ports and Client/Server Application Port Use
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Common TCP/IP Applications and Assigned Well-Known and Registered Port Numbers
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TCP/IP Sockets and Socket Pairs: Process and Connection Identification
(Page 2 of 2)

Socket Pairs: Connection Identification

So, the exchange of data between a pair of devices consists of a series of messages sent from a socket on one device to a socket on the other. Each device will normally have multiple such simultaneous conversations going on. In the case of TCP, a connection is established for each pair of devices for the duration of the communication session. These connections must be managed, and this requires that they be uniquely identified. This is done using the pair of socket identifiers for each of the two devices that are connected.

Key Concept: Each device may have multiple TCP connections active at any given time. Each connection is uniquely identified using the combination of the client socket and server socket, which in turn contains four elements: the client IP address and port, and the server IP address and port.


Let's return to the example we used in the previous topic (Figure 199). We are sending an HTTP request from our client at 177.41.72.6 to the Web site at 41.199.222.3. The server for that Web site will use well-known port number 80, so its socket is 41.199.222.3:80, as we saw before. We have been ephemeral port number 3,022 for our Web browser, so the client socket is 177.41.72.6:3022. The overall connection between these devices can be described using this socket pair:

(41.199.222.3:80, 177.41.72.6:3022)

For much more on how TCP identifies connections, see the topic on TCP ports and connection identification in the section on TCP fundamentals.

Unlike TCP, UDP is a connectionless protocol, so it obviously doesn't use connections. The pair of sockets on the sending and receiving devices can still be used to identify the two processes exchanging data, but since there are no connections the socket pair doesn't have the significance that it does in TCP.


Previous Topic/Section
TCP/IP Client (Ephemeral) Ports and Client/Server Application Port Use
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2
Next Page
Common TCP/IP Applications and Assigned Well-Known and Registered Port Numbers
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