High range port numbers

[Brenda Carpenter]

Hi All,

We have a vendor that has given us very high range port numbers to use with our new interfaces with them and I was wondering if anyone had issues in Cloverleaf using port numbers that are this high in the range?  57721 thru 57727

The reason I ask is because, our “IP and Port documentation” has two note statements in it regarding the usage of port numbers and I would like to know if still holds true today before we go live with this interface. We are on version cl 6.2.2.0

**Notes below**

Note:  Port numbers must be 1024 or greater as 0-1023 are reserved by the system.

Note:  Port numbers must be less than 30000 as they are used at times by Cloverleaf System Functions.

***

Cloverleaf ‘Help’ also points out that the command hcigetnextport looks thru default range of 1024 to 49151.

Thank you!

Brenda  🙂

Topic

[Rob Lindsey]

On our Cloverleaf systems we have thousands of interfaces using ports 50,000 thru 65,000 without issue.

Rob

[Robert Milfajt]

Infrequently, but still it happens, a Cloverleaf process will grab a port defined in NetConfig for it’s own communication purposes.  If UNIX, lsof and netstat commands will be useful for you to figure this out.  It’s a simple matter of stopping that process, starting up your thread and starting the process back up, but in a lot of years, I’ve only seen this a handful of times, and mostly on test server.

Robert Milfajt
Northwestern Medicine
Chicago, IL

[Brenda Carpenter]

Thank you both for your inputs.   So far we have them running on test sporadically as we are in the initial phase of setting up connectivity, and yes we are on UNIX.

Rob Lindsey – are you also on UNIX?

[Jim Kosloskey]

Here is my understanding and .02…

Those port numbers are in the typical (system default) ephemeral range of ports. That range if I recall correctly is between 32768 and 65536.

You can assign ports in that range but if you release the port (close the connection for example) and a request is made for a port inside the ephemeral range and the routine to assign a port from the ephemeral range decides to use your port you could have a conflict. The routine does not assign to ports in the ephemeral range which are already committed for obvious reasons.

Cloverleaf is constantly requesting ports from the ephemeral range. Turn the EO all the way up and just watch you will see a number of requests for ports. If you know the ports will never be released then you could be safe. But I would not rely on it because when the issue arises it is not easy to troubleshoot in my experience nor would I necessarly recall – oh yeah I am in the ephemeral range.

Generally I try to stay above 12000 and below 32768. Most vendors can accomodate using different ports than they specify.

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.

[Brenda Carpenter]

Thanks Jim for your wealth of knowledge and valuable two cents!  We are going to err on the side of caution and request a new range of ports from this vendor.  😀

[Rob Lindsey]

Jim is correct in everything he says.  Most of the modern EMRs and applications can and will be able to use the ports in the higher range.  We have had no issues.

We are on Redhat Linux.

When I say thousands… I do mean we have over 2,000 inbound interfaces using port numbers > 50,000.

Rob

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