Re: Reminder: WGLC Announcement for draft-ietf-tsvwg-iana-ports-08 - 26th November 2010

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On Dec 1, 2010, at 6:05, Lars Eggert <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> On 2010-12-1, at 12:36, Eliot Lear wrote:
>> As I recall, though, nobody really had a problem with dropping the
>> distinction.  It's only there in some UNIX flavors; and the only real
>> issue is on multi-user systems where the port could conceivably be
>> grabbed by someone.  Realistically, that's not a concern because if it's
>> important, there is something listening from start-up.
> 
> "only some Unix flavors" is severely understating the issue. I just tried MacOS, FreeBSD and Ubuntu Linux, and none of them let user process bind to ports below 1024.
> 
> I agree with you that the reasons for having separate port ranges are bogus, but the *reality* is that it *matters* whether your port is above or below 1024 on many deployed systems. And hence it matters for applicants what number they get.

I would argue that at this point the 1024 boundary is now a de facto standard.  I could
not find a compelling reason in the draft for changing it. If there is one it would be great if someone could point it out to me.

Best,
George