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What is the difference between a port number and a protocol number?
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A port is identified for each transport protocol and address combination by a 16-bit unsigned number, known as the port number. The most common transport protocols that use port numbers are the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the User Datagram Protocol (UDP).
A port in networking is a software-defined number associated to a network protocol that receives or transmits communication for a specific service. A port in computer hardware is a jack or socket that peripheral hardware plugs into.
The IP address refers to the Internet Protocol Address. These basically identify a host present in a network. We use Port numbers for identifying any process/ service present on your system.
You can think of a port as a phone extension, with the computer's IP address being like its phone number. You can call the number (IP address) to talk to the computer, then dial the extension (port) to talk to a specific application. An application needs to be listening on a port in order to communicate.
A protocol is just the language that the two applications on either end of a conversation agree to speak in. If your application is sending streams of bytes to my application, my application needs to know how to interpret those bytes.
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Protocol = how to communicate, Port = where to communicate
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