An IP address is an identifying token used to route communications over networks supporting the Internet Protocol. Most internal networks as well as the Internet use the Internet Protocol. A port is an additional hierarchical level of identification that allows two software applications to communicate with one another.
When a connection or FORWARDER is created, an IP address and port number must be supplied. The address must uniquely identify a machine running the message server and the port specified must be the port the server is configured to listen on for incoming connection requests.
IP Address
The IP address can be entered in any format recognized by the underlying network system. TCP/IP is the mechanism used to establish connections, so machine addresses can always be entered in dotted quad format, i.e. xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx. Typically, however, the domain name is used instead, leaving the conversion to the operating system and its minions, e.g. www.DiamondSierra.com. For connections across LANs it is usually sufficient to simply specify the computer name, again leaving the operating system to resolve the mapping from machine name to IP address.
Note that the address “127.0.0.1” will always resolve to the local machine. Workspaces are created new with a connection named ‘Local’ and the address for that connection is specified as “127.0.0.1”. The pseudoname “localhost” is also usually configured to resolve to the local machine as well.
Port
The port number may be any integer between 1 and 32,767, but must be the one the target message server is configured to listen on. It is recommended that the same port value be used for all servers unless there is a conflict. Port numbers less than 1024 may be reserved for use by other applications.