On Thu, 14 Oct 2010 12:54:05 -0400 Greg Whynott <Greg.Whynott@oicr.on.ca> wrote:
this has nothing to do with ports. as others have said, think of a web server. httpd listens on tcp80 (maybe 443 too) and all the facebooker's on earth hit that port. could be hundreds of thousands, and only one port. Available memory and open files will be the limiting factor as to how many established connections you can maintain with one host, providing there are not any external limitations such as port speed.
You are correct. Brain fart here. I actually had to pull Stevens off the shelf for a quick refresher. Of course, every TCP connection is different but only includes one port on the server. The five-tuple that defines the connection includes the remote host (client) and port which is always unique at any one time. Other than local resource limits the total combinations is technically 256**6, i.e. every IP address times the number of ports. That's not even including IPV6. Still off-topic here though. The OP still needs to find the correct group to figure out his real problem. -- D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy@druid.net> | Democracy is three wolves http://www.druid.net/darcy/ | and a sheep voting on +1 416 425 1212 (DoD#0082) (eNTP) | what's for dinner.