The term ports or network ports usually means the physical interfaces or ports on a device, such as a router, switch, server, or even a personal computer. A physical port also known as an interface is the connector on a local system such as computer where an Ethernet cable to attach which connects the device to the rest of the network. However, even though these are the physical ports, there are also logical ports within an operating systems or a device. You may ask yourself, how does a physical port exist within a computer, server, or network appliance such as a router or switch? Here, we are going to further break down the concepts of these logical ports or what are known as network ports.
To get started, we will use a simple analogy to help you understand the fundamentals of logical ports on a system. Let's imagine you own an organization; at the organization...