Valid ranges for web site ports in IIS

Question

In IIS for Windows, you can specify a port for a web site under "Edit Bindings". 80 is the default port and 443 is for a secure protocol. I'd like to get a complete list of valid port ranges that can be used by a website? And if a port is allowed, what tells me if the port is available for use on that machine?

Solution

Valid ports for such use are 1-65535. In general, you should use standard ports for your services because this maximizes ease of operation and use.

netstat -nq on Windows and netstat -nvl on linux (feel free to tweak the options to your liking; all you really need is the list of in-use and particularly listening ports) will tell you which ports are open, but in general you should select a port you know is not used by another application you are running (and you should not have to determine this dynamically).

Comments

[MacGyver]

Looks like the "q" parameter isn't available on Windows 7

[Kiquenet]

standard ports list ?

[Falcon Momot]

The standard ports would be 80 and 443. Others are entirely arbitrary, but should be below 32768.

[MacGyver]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephemeral_port