TCP/IP- Platform Supported & Ports

What Platforms Support TCP/IP?

Most platforms support TCP/IP. However, the quality of that support can vary. Today, most mainstream operating systems have native TCP/IP support (that is, TCP/IP support that is built into the standard operating system distribution). However, older operating systems on some platforms lack such native support. The following table describes TCP/IP support for various platforms. If a platform has native TCP/IP support, it is labeled as such. If not, the name of a TCP/IP application is provided.

The table shows only the presence of support for a particular platform. The quality and extent of support is not mentioned. That depends upon the OS. For example, NT has better support for TCP/IP than OS/2

The Ports

Before starting our discussion on ports, I will like to give a brief idea about daemons. This is a term heard more frequently in the UNIX terminology. Windows users don't use this word. They use an equivalent word- TSR (Terminate & Stay Resident). So you must have got the meaning of the word. Daemon are programs that get started on boot-up and wait for a particular event to occur.When that event finally occurs, the daemon undertakes some action. Inetd is the most important daemon for UNIX platform.

Many TCP/IP programs can be initiated over the Internet. Most of these are client/server oriented. As each connection request is received, inetd starts a server program, which then communicates with the requesting client machine. To facilitate this process, each application (FTP or Telnet, for example) is assigned a unique address. This address is called a port. The application in

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