ipinky7

What is a TCP Port?

Very simplified, and maybe not technically correct, a TCP Port is kind of an identifier to which service on the target computer the data has to be routed to. Or in which language I should listen to data traffic.

You can imagine this like a room full of people talking in different languages. 2 people always speak the same language. You hear everything, but you want to listen only to the language you understand.

Imagine post (a letter from your family) routed to your house address. The letter address contains the street name, zip, city name (= IP address). Now imagine you live in a huge building, 20 different appartments. For the letter to find the appropriate appartment, we need in addition the appartment number (= TCP port).

http://www.steves-internet-guide.com/tcpip-ports-sockets/

How is it used?

IP Address and port together form a “socket”. Bidirectional internet communication always works between 2 sockets.

Why would I need to register one?

If you register a port it is kind of reserved for that purpose only. Others may reuse it, but then data communication may collide which is not what you want as a developer.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/218839/assigning-tcp-ip-ports-for-in-house-application-use

So all in all this new information floating around is nothing worth hyping about. It, imho, shows the fact that XRPL is for serious now. But that's about it. Who had any doubt on that, that XRP will be the standard I cannot help anyway.