[Gllug] sorts of ports

[David Damerell]

On Tuesday, 4 Sep 2001, Paul Brazier wrote:
>It seems like an unnecessary abstraction layer between the IP packets
>and the "service" required.
>I suppose there must be historical reasons for it (perhaps there are
>logical ones also?) but why couldn't the IP packet header just request
>http/ssh/ftp or whatever directly (e.g. by including the string "http")
>instead of going via an arbitrary "port" number? Is it just to save
>space in the IP headers?

That's a good idea, but instead of making these unique service
identifiers strings, we could assign a number to each service. 'http'
could be '80', for instance. Ooops, port numbers again.

More seriously, your scheme does not permit running services on
non-standard ports (perhaps several such), and offers no advantages.

-- 
David Damerell <damerell at chiark.greenend.org.uk> flcl?

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