I read the link on Beej's socket programming tutorial which was really good. Although it didn't answer a question i was pondering since somehwere in the beginning of the tutorial and I'm not able to find the solution to this on Stackoverflow or google.
Since my question may seem ambiguous in the title, let me elaborate it so that it's more lucid.
I just want to be able to use any port (> 1024 of course) say 12345 and establish a TELNET connection or an FTP connection but not using the default ports (23, 21, etc).
I have used the getaddrinfo function and used the AF_INET macro for IPV4, SOCK_STREAM for TCP and I could use "telnet" or port 23 for telnet in this function. But I want to know how do I (or can I use a custom port) use a custom port for the same. I have no problem with the code given in the tutorial link. I am new to this. So I'm just hoping that I can get some clarity with this.
PS: I am also reading Unix Network Programming (vol 1) although I just started and I can't seem to find it in that either.
Many thanks!
Then writing your own TCP client/server applications you are free to use any ports you like (aside the fact that you need root privileges to bind ports below 1024) and which are not used by the rest of the system. So you should bind to desired port/interface on server side and use the same port for client application.
Just bind your socket to that port number before calling listen().
probably you can enter entry based one new port in services file located in system32\etc\drivers
Related
Please forgive me for being naive on the subject, however, I do not understand ports and how they work in the slightest. I am trying to make a program where two computers could communicate given their IP addresses and I am using TCP protocol. I don't, however, know what port(s) I would be able to use for this application, because when I look up TCP ports I get a list of ports each with their own function. Any help is useful.
P.S. I am using C to create my program
The short answer is you can choose any port you like - although the safe range is generally considered to be between 1024 and 65535. The only problem that you will encounter is when some other program installed on the device is already listening on that port. Unfortunately, there is no port that is guaranteed to be available to listen on.
One possible solution to this is to have a primary listening port and a fallback secondary port. You can then first try to connect on the primary port and, if a satisfactory response is not received, try to connect on the secondary port. However, even this is not infallible, as there is a chance that the secondary post could also be in use.
The easiest approach is to try to create your listener on the port that you have chosen, and if the port fails to create, let the user know that some other application is preventing execution of your application.
I am trying to determine which local IP would be used on a socket for a TCP connection towards a given host on Linux, using C.
Let me make an example. I could connect my socket and use getsockname() on the file descriptor to get the local ip (and local TCP port); but can I do this without opening the connection?
I could read the routing table and make a decision based on that - but the networking subsystem must have that algorithm already, for when the connection is actually open. In short, I'd like to know if there is an API to access the routing algorithms without having to parse the rules myself or opening an actual connection. The solution - if any - will probably be Linux only but that's OK.
EDIT: someone on IRC suggested I create a UDP socket and use connect() on it. No network is used at that point but I should be able to use getsockname() on it
The only solution I know to this is what traceroute does. Send a packet with a TTL of 1 and see which interface the ICMP return comes in on. As I recall there are lots of incompatibilities between different hosts, so there's probably several different types of messages you might need to send/receive to get the data you need.
All of the tutorials and examples I find online always specify a port number like 7000 or 4950 etc. What if those ports are open on one computer, but another? Seems like that case makes doing that a bad idea. Is there a way to say "find and use any open port"? My code now is like this -
//get server info, put into servinfo
if ((status = getaddrinfo("192.168.2.2", port, &hints, &servinfo)) != 0) {
fprintf(stderr, "getaddrinfo error: %s\n", gai_strerror(status));
return false;
}
with port being 4950. This is for a tcp socket, but I'm assuming it will be the same general strategy for udp?
Also quick question - if I am using both tcp and udp connections in an application, should they use different ports? (didn't feel like this deserved another question)
Seems like that case makes doing that a bad idea
Not so, see below.
Is there a way to say "find and use any open port"?
Sure, you could just not bind or pass NULL as port. But then, how would the clients know where to connect to ? You would have to publish this information somewhere.
Back to bind(2). If you specify a port of 0 the kernel chooses an ephemeral port when bind is called.
Here's a quote from TLPI:
There are other possibilities than binding a server’s socket to a
well-known address. For example, for an Internet domain socket, the
server could omit the call to bind() and simply call listen(), which
causes the kernel to choose an ephem- eral port for that socket.
Afterward, the server can use getsockname() to retrieve the address
of its socket. In this scenario, the server must then publish that
address so that clients know how to locate the server’s socket. Such
publication could be done by registering the server’s address with a
centralized directory service application that clients then contact in
order to obtain the address.
Back to your questions:
Also quick question - if I am using both tcp and udp connections in an
application, should they use different ports
Not necessarily. They don't "get mixed up".
I've not a clear idea about when I have to use the bind() function.
I guess it should be used whenever I need to receive data (i.e. recv() or recvfrom() functions) whether I'm using TCP or UDP, but somebody told me this is not the case.
Can anyone clarify a bit?
EDIT I've read the answers but actually I'm not so clear. Let's take an example where I have an UDP client which sends the data to the server and then has to get a response. I have to use bind here, right?
This answer is a little bit long-winded, but I think it will help.
When we do computer networking, we're really just doing inter-process communication. Lets say on your own computer you had two programs that wanted to talk to each other. You might use pipe to send the data from one program to another. When you say ls | grep pdf you are taking the output of ls and feeding it into grep. In this way, you have unidirectional communication between the two separate programs ls and grep.
When you do this, someone needs to keep track of the Process ID (PID) of each process. That PID is a unique identifier for each process and it helps us track who the "source" and "destination" processes are for the data we want to transfer.
So now lets say you have data from a webserver than you want to transfer to a browser. Well, this is the same scenario as above - interprocess communication between two programs, the "server" and "browser".
Except this time those two programs are on different computers. The mechanism for interprocess communication across two computers are called "sockets".
So great. You take some data, lob it over the wire, and the other computer receives it. Except that computer doesn't know what to do with that data. Remember we said we need a PID to know which processes are communicating? The same is true in networking. When your computer receives HTML data, how does it know to send it to "firefox" rather than "pidgin"?
Well when you transmit network data, you specify that it goes on a specific "port". Port 80 is usually used for web, port 25 for telnet, port 443 for HTTPS, etc.
And that "port" is bound to a specific process ID on the machine. This is why we have ports. This is why we use bind(). In order to tell the sender which process should receive our data.
This should explain the answers people have posted. If you are a sender, you don't care what the outgoing port is, so you usually don't use bind() to specify that port. If you are a receiver, well, everyone else has to know where to look for you. So you bind() your program to port 80 and then tell everyone to make sure to transmit data there.
To answer your hw question, yes, your probably want to use bind() for your server. But the clients don't need to use bind() - they just need to make sure they transmit data to whatever port you've chosen.
After reading your updated question. I would suggest not to use bind() function while making client calls. The function is used, while writing your own server, to bind the socket (created after making a call to socket()) to a physical address.
For further help look at this tutorial
bind() is useful when you are writing a server which awaits data from clients by "listening" to a known port. With bind() you are able to set the port on which you will listen() with the same socket.
If you are writing the client, it is not needed for you to call bind() -- you can simply call recv() to obtain the data sent from the server. Your local port will be set to an "ephemeral" value when the TCP connection is established.
You use bind whenever you want to bind to a local address. You mostly use this for opening a listening socket on a specific address/port, but it can also be used to fix the address/port of an outgoing TCP connection.
you need to call bind() only in your server. It's needed especially for binding a #port to your socket.
I'm learning C socket programming. When would you use bind() on the client-side? What types of program will need it and why? Where can I find an example?
On the client side, you would only use bind if you want to use a specific client-side port, which is rare. Usually on the client, you specify the IP address and port of the server machine, and the OS will pick which port you will use. Generally you don't care, but in some cases, there may be a firewall on the client that only allows outgoing connections on certain port. In that case, you will need to bind to a specific port before the connection attempt will work.
An example would be the data connection of an active FTP connection. In this case, the server connects from its port 20 to the IP and port specified by a PORT or EPRT command.
A classic example of a client program using bind() is the (obsolete) rlogin / rsh family of network clients. These clients were intended to be used within networks with strong trust relationships - in some cases the server machine trusts the client machine to tell it the username of the user that is connecting. This required that the client program connect from a low port (a port less than 1024), because such ports are restricted to the root user and thus (in theory) prove that the client being used is authorised by the system administrator.
The NFS protocol has similar trust relationships, and similarly the client makes connections from a low port number, using bind().
Another example is IRC clients that allow the user to specify a particular source IP address to connect from. This is to accomodate users with many IP addresses assigned to their machine, each with a different "vanity" domain name assigned to it. Choosing which IP to connect from (with bind()) allows the user to choose which domain name to appear as on IRC.
A good situation would be in a p2p case, you’re communicating with a STUN Server with a bound socket, and the STUN Server tells you the port on which he is receiving messages from your socket (that can be different from the one you specified when you bound your socket depending on your network and more specifically on your NAT type). This will allow you to be aware of the real port translation that your NAT is doing, and you’ll be able to give this information to potential peers that want to connect to you.
Binding the socket is useful as some NATs are dynamically giving you ports (binding on port x twice might not give you the same “real” port). So you’ll be able to directly use the socket you bound to listen on the port.
I suppose you should bind() in the case of UDP sockets.
bind function is one of "key" functions. It associates your socket (server or client) with address (ip + port). As for Windows you must use bind for WinSockets. There is good book about it "Network Programming for Microsoft Windows" by Anthony Jones and Jim Ohlund.
Bind can be used to attach names to a sockets. Thus, say you create a software that uses a particular TCP port, you need to bind it and then, you will know the TCP port it is using.