What is a good winsock port for chat

[drunkmonkey]

I'm making network chat/file sharing/monitoring software for a school network but I don't know what a good winsock port is. Does anyone else know or can I just use almost any port? thanx:cool:

[XWRed1]

You can use any port, but it'd be wise to choose one above 1024, and it'd be wise to pick one not used by something else important.

[drunkmonkey]

thanx, i just picked 2500 randomly.

[Gandalf]

Whats a port?

[drunkmonkey]

it's hard to explain. a port like I'm talking about is a stream of data. For each IP address there are thousands of usable ports. one for e-mail, one for ftp, one for http, etc. this divides everything up so it's not on big cluster of information. I'm making sure I pick the right port because I'm makeing a network chat/file sharing program for a guy I work for sometimes but I dont have a network myself so I can't test anything.

[Gandalf]

OK, I think I get it now.

[Superman53142]

How about port 80 (j/k) :p I heard that one's never used. :D

[ButcherUK]

A port isn't really a stream of data - that's a socket, a port is a way of addressing a particular service (http, ftp chat etc.) on a machine. You can have a large number of streams of data open on a single port (each one has it's own socket). Only one program can listen on a particular port though.