Re: [Sks-devel] Ports used by sks

[David Shaw]

On Feb 3, 2009, at 2:00 AM, Andy Ruddock wrote:
> David Shaw wrote:
> > On Feb 2, 2009, at 7:30 PM, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote:
> >
> > > > Also, isn't the port changeable on a per-peer basis in SKS?  If so,
> > > > there is no point in registering the port at all, as setting up a  
> > > > new
> > > > peer is a manual operation.
> > >
> > > Well but this is also the case with the 11371 port, and basically  
> > > with
> > > most other protocols, too, isn't it?
> >
> > No, the 11371 port is needed because it is part of the HKP protocol,
> > just like 80 is part of the HTTP protocol.  11370, on the other  
> > hand, is
> > just some port that SKS uses.  It's not in use by clients.  That  
> > port is
> > manually configured.
>
> Isn't port 80 simply the default port used by http, certainly it's not
> uncommon to use other ports (8080 springing to mind).
> The http spec (rfc2616) says:
> "The default port is TCP 80 [19], but other ports can be used."
> [19] is a pointer to rfc1700 - assigned numbers.

Exactly.  Port 80 is the default port for http just like 11371 is the  
default port for HKP.  So if you said "hkp://my.keyserver" it would be  
on port 11371.  This saves users from having to know that the port is  
11371, just like users going to a web page don't need to remember to  
do something like "http://blahblah:80";.  Port 11370 is not user visible.

David