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

The port was the easiest part, it is just a unique identifier for a socket. A socket is something processes can use to establish connections and to communicate with each other. Tall Jeff had a great telephone analogy which was not perfect, so I decided to fix it:

• ip and port ~ phone number
• socket ~ phone device
• connection ~ phone call
• establishing connection ~ calling a number
• processes, remote applications ~ people
• messages ~ speech