Port-Based Routing

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Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 with SP1

You can use a nonstandard TCP port number for each Web site. Some administrators use ports other than port 80 for development and testing purposes or for running other server applications that require exclusive access to port 80.

When using port-based routing to host multiple Web sites on the same server, consider the following:

  • A server can listen on a maximum of 64 ports at one time. The actual number of ports a server can listen on varies depending on the available RAM on the computer. Therefore, you cannot use port-based routing to route a large number of sites.

  • Port-based routing consumes a vast amount of kernel resources and can degrade server performance.

  • If you use a nonstandard TCP port number to identify a Web site, users cannot reach the site by using a standard name or URL. Instead, users must know the nonstandard TCP port number assigned to the Web site and add it to the name or IP address of the Web site in their browser. For example, to reach a private Web site named Contoso with an IP address of 10.0.0.02 and HTTP assigned to the nonstandard TCP port 8080, users would have to type https://contoso:8080 or https://10.0.0.02:8080 in their browser to reach the site.

If you choose to use a nonstandard port for a nonproduction server, use a port number higher than 1023 so that it does not conflict with the well-known port numbers that the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) assigns.