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What would be a good analogy for IP addresses and ports?
What would be a good way to describe ports? I learned about it using this analogy, but it seems pretty inadequate to me:
IP addresses are like street addresses of apartment buildings, and ports are like the apartments therein.
IP addresses are not segmented as a street address is, and second, apartments don't seem at all analogous to ports in terms of behavior.
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2 Answers
You can consider an IP number to be analogous to a business's telephone number (reaching the main switchboard), and the port number to be the telephone extension number for one person.
This probably works better when there is no direct-dial to a specific person, and the main number is handled by an automated system.
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As a former student I'd like to confess that for me these attempted analogies about the ports just made a simple thing sound mysterious and in retrospect had absolutely zero insight whatsoever.
What about saying instead that TCP/IP is just a program running on your computer like everything else and ports are just an integer in its configuration. That'd be a start.
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What would be a good analogy for IP addresses and ports?
What would be a good way to describe ports? I learned about it using this analogy, but it seems pretty inadequate to me:
IP addresses are like street addresses of apartment buildings, and ports are like the apartments therein.
IP addresses are not segmented as a street address is, and second, apartments don't seem at all analogous to ports in terms of behavior.
32.8k11 gold badges68 silver badges151 bronze badges
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You can consider an IP number to be analogous to a business's telephone number (reaching the main switchboard), and the port number to be the telephone extension number for one person.
This probably works better when there is no direct-dial to a specific person, and the main number is handled by an automated system.
1512 bronze badges
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