What is the difference between a port and a socket?

Question

This was a question raised by one of the software engineers in my organisation. I\'m interested in the broadest definition.

Answer 1

With some analogy

Although a lot technical stuff is already given above for sockets... I would like to add my answer, just in case , if somebody still could not feel the difference between ip, port and sockets

Consider a server S,

and say person X,Y,Z need a service (say chat service) from that server S

then

IP address tells --> who? is that chat server 'S' that X,Y,Z want to contact

okay, you got "who is the server"

but suppose that server 'S' is providing some other services to other people as well,say 'S' provides storage services to person A,B,C

then

port tells ---> which? service you (X,Y,Z) need i.e. chat service and not that storage service

okay.., you make server to come to know that 'chat service' is what you want and not the storage

but

you are three and the server might want to identify all the three differently

there comes the socket

now socket tells--> which one? particular connection

that is , say ,

socket 1 for person X

socket 2 for person Y

and socket 3 for person Z

I hope it helps someone who was still confused :)