Protip: If you're planning to earn an IT certification exam, you may need to have many of the most common TCP ports memorized. By contrast, you might download some software from, their FTP server is going to be listening on the well-known Port 23. That happens because CBT Nuggets' web server aka its HTTP server is listening for incoming connections on a particular port address.

And with that, you're specifying the hypertext transfer protocol - and hopefully, you get the page without issue. When you type in '', your browser translates that to ''. Generally, a TCP port represents an application or service-specific endpoint identifier. UDP, which is a best-effort connectionless protocol, is the other one.įor devices to communicate via TCP, they use TCP ports. TCP is one of the two main ways to transmit data in a TCP/IP network. TCP is a connection-oriented protocol that requires a connection or a circuit between the source sending computer and the destination one. Transmission Control Protocol is a key component of the TCP/IP protocol stack. One device can receive information for many different processes and services, and which port the information flows on helps to keep it organized. Much like before shipping something to a foreign country, you'd agree where you'd be shipping out of and where you'd have it arriving, TCP ports allow for standardized communication between devices. Ports are numbered and used as global standards to identify specific processes or types of network services. Quick Definition of TCP Ports: A 'port' is a logical distinction in computer networking. It is one of the main protocols of the Internet protocol suite - and the entire suite is often referred to as TCP/IP. This means the data is reliable, ordered and error-checked in transit. TCP is defined by being connection-oriented, which means that both the client and the server have to be established before the data gets sent. Quick Definition of TCP: Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is a global communication standard that devices use to reliably transmit data.

Tcpview endpoints