In C#, how to check if a TCP port is available?

Question

Since you're using a TcpClient, that means you're checking open TCP ports. There are lots of good objects available in the System.Net.NetworkInformation namespace.

Use the IPGlobalProperties object to get to an array of TcpConnectionInformation objects, which you can then interrogate about endpoint IP and port.

---

 int port = 456; //<--- This is your value
 bool isAvailable = true;

 // Evaluate current system tcp connections. This is the same information provided
 // by the netstat command line application, just in .Net strongly-typed object
 // form.  We will look through the list, and if our port we would like to use
 // in our TcpClient is occupied, we will set isAvailable to false.
 IPGlobalProperties ipGlobalProperties = IPGlobalProperties.GetIPGlobalProperties();
 TcpConnectionInformation[] tcpConnInfoArray = ipGlobalProperties.GetActiveTcpConnections();

 foreach (TcpConnectionInformation tcpi in tcpConnInfoArray)
 {
   if (tcpi.LocalEndPoint.Port==port)
   {
     isAvailable = false;
     break;
   }
 }

 // At this point, if isAvailable is true, we can proceed accordingly.

You're on the wrong end of the Intertube. It is the server that can have only one particular port open. Some code:

  IPAddress ipAddress = Dns.GetHostEntry("localhost").AddressList[0];
  try {
    TcpListener tcpListener = new TcpListener(ipAddress, 666);
    tcpListener.Start();
  }
  catch (SocketException ex) {
    MessageBox.Show(ex.Message, "kaboom");
  }

Fails with:

Only one usage of each socket address (protocol/network address/port) is normally permitted.

When you set up a TCP connection, the 4-tuple (source-ip, source-port, dest-ip, dest-port) has to be unique - this is to ensure packets are delivered to the right place.

There is a further restriction on the server side that only one server program can bind to an incoming port number (assuming one IP address; multi-NIC servers have other powers but we don't need to discuss them here).

So, at the server end, you:

• create a socket.
• bind that socket to a port.
• listen on that port.
• accept connections on that port. and there can be multiple connections coming in (one per client).

On the client end, it's usually a little simpler:

• create a socket.
• open the connection. When a client opens the connection, it specifies the ip address and port of the server. It can specify its source port but usually uses zero which results in the system assigning it a free port automatically.

There is no requirement that the destination IP/port be unique since that would result in only one person at a time being able to use Google, and that would pretty well destroy their business model.

This means you can even do such wondrous things as multi-session FTP since you set up multiple sessions where the only difference is your source port, allowing you to download chunks in parallel. Torrents are a little different in that the destination of each session is usually different.

And, after all that waffling (sorry), the answer to your specific question is that you don't need to specify a free port. If you're connecting to a server with a call that doesn't specify your source port, it'll almost certainly be using zero under the covers and the system will give you an unused one.

Thanks for this tip. I needed the same functionality but on the Server side to check if a Port was in use so I modified it to this code.

 private bool CheckAvailableServerPort(int port) {
    LOG.InfoFormat("Checking Port {0}", port);
    bool isAvailable = true;

    // Evaluate current system tcp connections. This is the same information provided
    // by the netstat command line application, just in .Net strongly-typed object
    // form.  We will look through the list, and if our port we would like to use
    // in our TcpClient is occupied, we will set isAvailable to false.
    IPGlobalProperties ipGlobalProperties = IPGlobalProperties.GetIPGlobalProperties();
    IPEndPoint[] tcpConnInfoArray = ipGlobalProperties.GetActiveTcpListeners();

    foreach (IPEndPoint endpoint in tcpConnInfoArray) {
        if (endpoint.Port == port) {
            isAvailable = false;
            break;
        }
    }

    LOG.InfoFormat("Port {0} available = {1}", port, isAvailable);

    return isAvailable;
}

TcpClient c;

//I want to check here if port is free.
c = new TcpClient(ip, port);

...how can I first check if a certain port is free on my machine?

I mean that it is not in use by any other application. If an application is using a port others can't use it until it becomes free. – Ali

You have misunderstood what's happening here.

TcpClient(...) parameters are of server ip and server port you wish to connect to.

The TcpClient selects a transient local port from the available pool to communicate to the server. There's no need to check for the availability of the local port as it is automatically handled by the winsock layer.

In case you can't connect to the server using the above code fragment, the problem could be one or more of several. (i.e. server ip and/or port is wrong, remote server not available, etc..)