Ports :80 and :443 traffic

Question

I am sorry if this question does not make sense but I am struggling to understand this topic. I have made an audio video style application that uses ports :80 and :443 but my senior developers worry is that it will not work because other applications also use ports :80 and :443 like skype and gmail.

My question is how do I get past this issue? Is it possible?

Again sorry if the question does not make sense

Thanks!

Answer 1

If you hosting your application, then it would not be problem. As you said other application like gmail etc uses the same port 80, i.e. means gmail server keeps listening on the port 80. When we access the gmail, any port is selected (1024 <) on client side. these ports are usually called as ephemeral ports

So when you access gmail, port say 41667 on your machine opened and connected to port 80 of gmail. port 80 inturn pass to other available port and keeps listening so many user at the same time can access gmail.

Answer 2

The convention for ports 80 and 443 is for http and https protocols. Gmail listens on those ports, but it is sitting on a remote host, the local ports are random. Skype do make use of those ports as an alternate configuration.

If you are coding both sides, you should consider other ports (>1024). If you are relaying on users connecting to your server with regular http or https stay with 80 and 443, otherwise they will have to know the port and specify it in the http call (http://<YOUR_HOST | IP>:<PORT#>).