端口表示IP网络协议的TCP和UDP传输中的通信端点。套接字是通信端点的软件抽象，通常用于这些协议的实现(套接字API)。另一种实现是XTI/TLI API。

参见:

史蒂文斯，W. R. 1998, UNIX网络编程:网络api:套接字和XTI;第一卷，普伦蒂斯大厅。 Stevens, W. R.， 1994, TCP/IP图解，第1卷:协议，Addison-Wesley。

In a broad sense, Socket - is just that, a socket, just like your electrical, cable or telephone socket. A point where "requisite stuff" (power, signal, information) can go out and come in from. It hides a lot of detailed stuff, which is not required for the use of the "requisite stuff". In software parlance, it provides a generic way of defining a mechanism of communication between two entities (those entities could be anything - two applications, two physically separate devices, User & Kernel space within an OS, etc)

端口是端点标识符。它区分一个端点和另一个端点。在网络级别，它将一个应用程序与另一个应用程序区分开来，以便网络堆栈可以将信息传递给适当的应用程序。

A socket is a communication endpoint. A socket is not directly related to the TCP/IP protocol family, it can be used with any protocol your system supports. The C socket API expects you to first get a blank socket object from the system that you can then either bind to a local socket address (to directly retrieve incoming traffic for connection-less protocols or to accept incoming connection requests for connection-oriented protocols) or that you can connect to a remote socket address (for either kind of protocol). You can even do both if you want to control both, the local socket address a socket is bound to and the remote socket address a socket is connected to. For connection-less protocols connecting a socket is even optional but if you don't do that, you'll have to also pass the destination address with every packet you want to send over the socket as how else would the socket know where to send this data to? Advantage is that you can use a single socket to send packets to different socket addresses. Once you have your socket configured and maybe even connected, consider it to be a bi-directional communication pipe. You can use it to pass data to some destination and some destination can use it to pass data back to you. What you write to a socket is send out and what has been received is available for reading.

Ports on the other hand are something that only certain protocols of the TCP/IP protocol stack have. TCP and UDP packets have ports. A port is just a simple number. The combination of source port and destination port identify a communication channel between two hosts. E.g. you may have a server that shall be both, a simple HTTP server and a simple FTP server. If now a packet arrives for the address of that server, how would it know if that is a packet for the HTTP or the FTP server? Well, it will know so as the HTTP server will run on port 80 and the FTP server on port 21, so if the packet arrives with a destination port 80, it is for the HTTP server and not for the FTP server. Also the packet has a source port since without such a source port, a server could only have one connection to one IP address at a time. The source port makes it possible for a server to distinguish otherwise identical connections: they all have the same destination port, e.g. port 80, the same destination IP (the IP of the server), and the same source IP, as they all come from the same client, but as they have different source ports, the server can distinguish them from each other. And when the server sends back replies, it will do so to the port the request came from, that way the client can also distinguish different replies it receives from the same server.

套接字是软件中的一种结构。它差不多是一个文件;它有读和写这样的操作。它不是一个物理的东西;它是你的软件引用物理事物的一种方式。

端口是一个类似设备的东西。每台主机都有一个或多个网络(这些是物理网络);主机在每个网络上都有一个地址。每个地址可以有数千个端口。

只有一个套接字可能在某个地址上使用某个端口。套接字分配端口类似于为文件系统I/O分配设备。一旦分配了端口，就没有其他套接字可以连接到该端口。当套接字被关闭时，端口将被释放。

看一下TCP/IP术语。

端口是网络协议用来访问连接的主机的实体。端口可以是特定于应用程序的，也可以是与特定通信媒介相关的。不同的协议使用不同的端口访问主机，如HTTP使用80端口或FTP使用23端口。您可以在应用程序中分配用户定义的端口号，但这些端口号应该大于1023。

端口打开到所需主机的连接，而套接字是网络间或进程间通信的端点。 套接字是由系统通过api(应用程序编程接口)分配的。

更微妙的区别是，当系统重新启动时，端口将出现，而套接字将被销毁。

港口定义

文顿·g·瑟夫和罗伯特·e·卡恩(1974年5月)。分组网络互通协议。IEEE通讯汇刊，第22卷，第5号。IEEE。

端口是“一对(实体)在一段时间内交换一条或多条消息”的单元。

“……我们可以看到一个端口产生的消息序列，就好像它嵌入在一个无限长的字节流中……我们强调，与给定数据包相关联的序列号仅对通信的端口对是唯一的…对到达的数据包进行检查，以确定它们要发送到哪个端口。目标进程应该指定它愿意侦听特定端口或‘任何’端口。”

一个“端口只是一个的指示器……双工…消息流……[在一个或多个]信息流中…与流程相关联。”

信息科学研究所:南加州大学(1981年9月)。RFC 793:传输控制协议:DARPA互联网程序协议规范。

端口是一个或多个实体的一个实体，进程通过一个或多个通信流与一个或多个其他进程通信。

由于一个进程可能需要区分它自己和另一个进程(或多个进程)之间的几个通信流，我们设想每个进程都可能有若干端口，通过这些端口与其他进程通信。

“这样做的目的是，只允许在具有完全相同的安全性和隔间值的端口之间进行连接，并且在两个端口要求的优先级中具有更高的优先级。” 注意，此检查放在顺序检查之后，以防止来自这些具有不同安全性或优先级的端口之间的旧连接的段导致当前连接中断。

端口是一个地址，它指定进程的哪个逻辑输入或输出通道与[数据流]相关联。 为了允许单个主机内的多个进程同时使用TCP通信设施，TCP在每台主机内提供了一组地址或端口。

套接字中指定进程的哪个逻辑输入或输出通道与数据相关联的部分。

Socket的定义

甲骨文(2020)。类套接字。Java平台，标准版7 API规范。

套接字是两台机器之间通信的端点。

信息科学研究所:南加州大学(1981年9月)。RFC 793:传输控制协议:DARPA互联网程序协议规范。

A socket is a string consisting of an Internet address [i.e., the first eight-bit number (e.g., 123) of a network address (e.g., 123.45.78.0), a period, the second eight-bit number (e.g., 45) of the network address, a period, the third eight-bit number (e.g., 78) of the network address, a period, and a host address (e.g., 90)], a colon, and a TCP port (e.g., 1234). A socket is a unit of “A pair of [entities that] uniquely identify [a] connection[, and that] may be simultaneously used in multiple connections.”

"To allow for many processes within a single Host to use TCP communication facilities simultaneously, the TCP provides a set of addresses or ports within each host. Concatenated with the network and host addresses from the internet communication layer, this forms a socket. A pair of sockets uniquely identifies each connection. That is, a socket may be simultaneously used in multiple connections." “To provide for unique addresses within each TCP, we concatenate an internet address identifying the TCP with a port identifier to create a socket which will be unique throughout all networks connected together.”

上面描述的可靠性和流量控制机制要求tcp初始化和维护每个数据流的特定状态信息。这些信息(包括套接字、序列号和窗口大小)的组合称为连接。每个连接都由一对识别其两端的套接字唯一指定。”