this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
203 points (99.5% liked)

Explain Like I'm Five

14321 readers
157 users here now

Simplifying Complexity, One Answer at a Time!

Rules

  1. Be respectful and inclusive.
  2. No harassment, hate speech, or trolling.
  3. Engage in constructive discussions.
  4. Share relevant content.
  5. Follow guidelines and moderators' instructions.
  6. Use appropriate language and tone.
  7. Report violations.
  8. Foster a continuous learning environment.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I often see that network settings have a field for logical port. What is this field.referring to?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] hydra 31 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Imagine you have a bunch of island countries. Each country needs to communicate with other countries for several affairs and to trade. A network connection is a route where boats transit back and forth between two said countries with people and things. The location of each island is encoded with a unique address, called an IP (Internet Protocol) address. The thing is, each country also has a huge, massive amount of different sea ports. A big amount of them. To be precise, 65536 different ones.

Each port number is associated with a service or a city that benefits from said sea traffic and expects boats. So to send a boat from one country to another, you need to send that boat from a specific port to a specific port in country (IP address). For example, port 80 is Website City in Google Land. You need to google something / send and receive boats with cargo (your search query). You have to send a boat from your own port 80 (Firefox Town) to Google Land (IP address of a Google server)'s own port 80 which is located in Website City.

Each network connection is a series of sea trips between cities.

[–] silvanocerza 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Awesome explanation, I'm reusing this for sure.

[–] hydra 1 points 1 year ago