套接字是一种特殊类型的文件句柄，进程使用它从操作系统请求网络服务。 套接字地址是三元组: {protocol, local-address, local-process}，其中本地进程由端口号标识。

在TCP/IP套件中，例如:

{tcp, 193.44.234.3, 12345}

会话是两个进程之间的通信链接，从而描述了两者之间的关联。 关联是一个5元组，它完全指定了组成连接的两个进程: {protocol, local-address, local-process, foreign-address, foreign-process}

在TCP/IP套件中，例如:

{tcp, 193.44.234.3, 1500, 193.44.234.5, 21}

可能是一个有效的关联。

半关联是: {protocol, local-address, local-process}

or

{protocol, foreign-address, foreign-process}

它们指定连接的每一半。

半关联也称为套接字或传输地址。也就是说，套接字是可以在网络中命名和寻址的通信端点。 套接字接口是通信协议的几个应用程序编程接口(api)之一。它被设计为一个通用的通信编程接口，最初由4.2BSD UNIX系统引入。虽然还没有标准化，但已经成为事实上的行业标准。

它们是来自两个不同领域的术语:“端口”是TCP/IP网络的概念，“套接字”是API(编程)的东西。“套接字”是通过将端口和主机名或网络适配器组合成一个数据结构(可以用来发送或接收数据)而形成的(在代码中)。

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.

在阅读了这些优秀的向上投票的答案后，我发现对于我这个网络编程新手来说，有以下几点需要强调:

TCP-IP连接是连接一个地址:端口组合和另一个地址:端口组合的双向路径。因此，每当您打开从本地计算机到远程服务器上的端口的连接(例如www.google.com:80)时，您也将计算机上的一个新端口号与该连接关联起来，以允许服务器将内容发回给您(例如127.0.0.1:65234)。使用netstat查看你机器的连接是很有帮助的:

> netstat -nWp tcp (on OS X)
Active Internet connections
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q  Local Address          Foreign Address        (state)    
tcp4       0      0  192.168.0.6.49871      17.172.232.57.5223     ESTABLISHED
...

相对的TCP/IP术语，我认为这是隐含的问题。通俗地说:

PORT类似于特定邮政编码中特定房屋的电话号码。城镇的邮政编码可以被认为是城镇和城镇中所有房屋的IP地址。

另一方面，SOCKET更像是一对房屋之间的电话之间的通话。这些呼叫可以在同一城镇的房屋之间建立，也可以在不同城镇的两所房屋之间建立。这对手机之间建立的临时通道就是SOCKET。

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。