Port AddressA port address is part of the addressing system used to enable client and server communication on the Internet. Port Address is a general term used to describe the port number and address included in URLs and E-mail addresses.
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Port numbers and addresses are essential to the communication between computers that occurs on the Internet. They are components of a somewhat complex naming scheme that provides servers with exact information on where to find requested material. An address missing either of these components can not be referenced by an Internet server. To understand the importance of Internet addressing, you can imagine a situation in which you have forgotten to include the street name on a piece of mail. The information would not reach its intended destination. Therefore, addressing used to reference Internet documents works in much the same way as a person's physical home address.
These two pieces of information are common to URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) and E-mail addresses. URLs are used to describe the location of a document on the Internet. Each type of Internet protocol (for example, HTTP, FTP, Gopher, and WAIS) uses its own type of URL. However, there are many similarities between all of them. The following is an example of an HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) URL: http://www.utexas.edu/maps/
The first part of the URL describes the protocol used to access the resource. The second part of a URL (that which begins after the double slash-marks and terminates at the next slash, contains the server address and port number. In this case, the port number is omitted. When a URL or E-mail address is written without the port number, the server assumes that the default port used for the protocol type is to be used. The default port number for HTTP is 80.
Port address could also refer to IP address. IP stands for Internetworking Protocol. It is an older but still valid way to access information from the Internet. The difference between an IP address and the type of addressing already described, is that an IP number is numeric. The previously described method is normally based on characters, and is called The Domain Naming System.