FireFox Ports 2

[jgilbert]

When you enter a web page into a browser, you are sending the request from a random port, or stratified random perhaps, correct? If you are using IE, does each window (assuming you are browsing multiple pages simultaneously in multiple IE windows) have it's own port number assigned to it, or does IE get assigned a port number and route the returned data by itself to the proper window.

I said this was a FireFox question, I suppose I should get to that. How do port assignments for requested web pages work with tabbed browsing?

 

[BabyJeffy]

All requests from a web browser (regardless of whether they are using tabbed browsing or not) go (by default) via port 80. This is a reserved port (for HTTP) number. You can use most other port numbers by appending ortnumber to the end of a url (example:

http://www.mydomain.com:8080/somepage.htm).

This is not guaranteed to work (since the server at that domain has to be "listening" at that port to respond).

Cheers,
Jeff

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[jgilbert]

Maybe I am incorrect, this is the port they GO TO, right? Or rather the port the server on the other end is listening on. However, this is not the port my browser sends from is it? If I were going to yahoo, it would look like this:

Destination IP: 66.94.230.35 (

http://www.yahoo.com)

Destination Port: 80 (default)

Source IP: 192.168.2.1 (though it would be my public IP)
Source Port: ?????

 

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

As far as I understand it, port 80 is the default listening port (on the server) for HTTP traffic, and transmissions from the client are sent on a unique port number per socket connection (presumably handled by the TCP driver).

To put it another way... Each new outgoing connection (usually each web request - page load, new tab, etc) connects to the web server at port 80 (so that's port 80 on the web server).

That outgoing connection needs to have a unique indentifier so that the response from the web server can be delivered to the right client "socket" (tab, window, etc). This is a unique number (the client-side port number).

Hope this helps,
Dan

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[jgilbert]

That was my line of thinking, Dan. Thanks. So, the question remains. Does each tab/window have its own port? Or does the browser program get a single report and have it's own internal routing.

 

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

Hmmm.. good question. If you type "about:config" into your FF address bar, and scroll down to "network.http.pipelining" or "network.http.max-connections", that might give a clue (depending on what yours is set to), but I can't say for sure.

Dan


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