Ports and sockets - keeping track of what goes to who

Talic

I would like to make sure I have my understanding of source and destination port requests correct. When a host sends a request to a server, does the server keep track of what data is being send to the host by the dynamic destination port number? Since all the requests are coming from various hosts, say on port 80, I would think that would be the only way it keeps track of what goes to who.

The books really didn't make it very clear, they just empathized that the host keeps track of incoming data by the dynamic port that was assigned to that session and seem to of forgot about what the server does.

mattrgee

Yes it will.

In the same way that the host could be using NAT to access the server, the server could also be accessing the host using NAT. In both cases the NAT translation table would keep track of which dynamic port has been assigned to each connection.

mattrgee

Using the Windows command line program: netstat, is always good for seeing what sockets are currently being utilised.