I am running server and client in same system. TCP protocol is used for communication between them. In a scenario where client wants to send packet to server, will it go through network infra (i.e. router, internet etc) and come to server or will it manage transfer within system and ignore network.
If you are on the server, any communication you initiate to IP addresses also on the same server will never leave the server.
You can test by installing tcpdump then running from the console/keyboard/mouse:
tcpdump -n -i enp0s5 not arp
Do not generate network traffic. Try to ssh to your account on IP 127.0.0.1 (e.g. risner#127.0.0.1).
Also try to initiate ssh to another host on the network.
Nothing should show on tcpdump, so that indicates it is not leaving the machine.
I have two servers in AWS, both in a security group that allows all traffic on all ports between members of the security group. On one server I have a MySQL server (without docker, let's call this server the "MySQL server") and on the other server I have docker (let's call it the "Docker server"). I want to access MySQL from within a container on the docker server without having to route the traffic over the internet (I'd like to use the internal IP address of the MySQL server instead).
Is this possible? What are my options?
What I've tried so far
I've configured the MySQL server to listen on all interfaces, just for testing. This allows me to connect to the MySQL server successfully from the Docker server (using mysql client to connect to the private IP address of the MySQL server). However when I start a container a new network namespace is created so I can't access the private IP address of the MySQL server anymore.
I've tried using an ambassador container as described here but I run into the same problem, the private IP address of the MySQL server is not available from inside the ambassador container.
Example
Here's an example to illustrate the problem and what I'm trying to do.
From the Docker server (not in any container yet):
$ ping -c 1 10.0.0.155
PING 10.0.0.155 (10.0.0.155) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 10.0.0.155: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.777 ms
--- 10.0.0.155 ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.777/0.777/0.777/0.000 ms
However trying from within a container:
$ sudo docker run --rm -it apcera/nats-ping-client ping -c 1 10.0.0.115
PING 10.0.0.115 (10.0.0.115) 56(84) bytes of data.
From 10.0.0.200 icmp_seq=1 Destination Host Unreachable
--- 10.0.0.115 ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 0 received, +1 errors, 100% packet loss, time 0ms
I expect this because I know that docker creates a new private network just for the containers but I don't know enough to be able to get around what I'm trying to do.
How can I wire things to be able to access the mysql server from within a container?
Yes that's possible.
Whether a container can talk to the world is governed by two factors. The first factor is whether the host machine is forwarding its IP packets. The second is whether the host’s iptables allow this particular connection.
To check the setting on your kernel or to turn it on manually: (be sure to set to 1)
$ sysctl net.ipv4.conf.all.forwarding
net.ipv4.conf.all.forwarding = 0
$ sysctl net.ipv4.conf.all.forwarding=1
$ sysctl net.ipv4.conf.all.forwarding
net.ipv4.conf.all.forwarding = 1
Docker will never make changes to your system iptables rules if you set --iptables=false when the daemon starts. Otherwise the Docker server will append forwarding rules to the DOCKER filter chain. So, be sure to not use --iptables=false
I have been trying to create a TCP connection between a client program and a remote server. I am able to form a connection between the two when they are running on the same machine, and any machines connected to my router. However, I am unable to form a connection to any of my friends' computers when I give them the server or client programs, and I am unable to form a connection between my computer and my remote server.
In order to locate the bug, I have shut down the firewalls of both my computer and my server, stopped using my own code and resorted to Netcat. However, the situation remains identical: I can form a server and connect to it with local machines, but cannot form any remote connections.
These are the commands I have been using with Netcat:
nc -vv XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX 1234
nc -l -vv -p 1234
Thanks in advance.
As far as I know, a (single generic) webserver uses ports (like any other tcp/upd application) to identify users/process. Since, a port is a 16-bit unsigned integer, thus ranging from 0 to 65535. How does server act when it reaches its limit?
High level sample
The server1 answering by 8080! The client1 conect to server1 (now they are connected by random ports: (but unique) server1:5123 <--> client1:6123)
Another client2 connect to the server1 ( server1:5124 <--> client2:7123 )
So, the thing is: Is the server limited by 65535 (in pratical less than that) for a given instance?
In the simplest case a webserver consumes only one TCP port (conventionally port 80) on the server system. All of the connections to the webserver are handled through that single port. The other 65534 ports remain available for other uses.
This works because a TCP connection is identified not just by the port number on the server, but by the combination of (server IP, server TCP port, client IP, client TCP port). So the server can have a huge number of concurrent TCP connections all on its port 80, using the other three items to identify which connection the traffic belongs to. If the server only has a single IP address, and therefore the (server IP, server port) portions are identical on all connections to the webserver, the individual connections are still distinguishable by the (client IP, client port) portions of the combination.
If you run the netstat -a command on a busy Unix webserver you'll see this in action. That command will show a bunch of connections on the server's port 80, but all with different client IPs and/or ports. It'll also show that the system is still listening for new connections on port 80, at the same time as it is handling all of the existing connections on that port.
The total number of connections to the webserver might be limited by some other constraint (perhaps memory usage, perhaps some arbitrary limit in the webserver itself or in the OS kernel) or by some external constraint (perhaps connection table size in external firewalls or gateways) but it's not limited by the 16-bit TCP port range.
Also note that TCP ports are completely separate from UDP ports, so using TCP port 80 for a webserver does not prevent UDP port 80 from being used for some other purpose. And vice versa.
This question already has answers here:
Does the port change when a server accepts a TCP connection?
(3 answers)
Closed 4 years ago.
I understand the basics of how ports work. However, what I don't get is how multiple clients can simultaneously connect to say port 80. I know each client has a unique (for their machine) port. Does the server reply back from an available port to the client, and simply state the reply came from 80? How does this work?
First off, a "port" is just a number. All a "connection to a port" really represents is a packet which has that number specified in its "destination port" header field.
Now, there are two answers to your question, one for stateful protocols and one for stateless protocols.
For a stateless protocol (ie UDP), there is no problem because "connections" don't exist - multiple people can send packets to the same port, and their packets will arrive in whatever sequence. Nobody is ever in the "connected" state.
For a stateful protocol (like TCP), a connection is identified by a 4-tuple consisting of source and destination ports and source and destination IP addresses. So, if two different machines connect to the same port on a third machine, there are two distinct connections because the source IPs differ. If the same machine (or two behind NAT or otherwise sharing the same IP address) connects twice to a single remote end, the connections are differentiated by source port (which is generally a random high-numbered port).
Simply, if I connect to the same web server twice from my client, the two connections will have different source ports from my perspective and destination ports from the web server's. So there is no ambiguity, even though both connections have the same source and destination IP addresses.
Ports are a way to multiplex IP addresses so that different applications can listen on the same IP address/protocol pair. Unless an application defines its own higher-level protocol, there is no way to multiplex a port. If two connections using the same protocol simultaneously have identical source and destination IPs and identical source and destination ports, they must be the same connection.
Important:
I'm sorry to say that the response from "Borealid" is imprecise and somewhat incorrect - firstly there is no relation to statefulness or statelessness to answer this question, and most importantly the definition of the tuple for a socket is incorrect.
First remember below two rules:
Primary key of a socket: A socket is identified by {SRC-IP, SRC-PORT, DEST-IP, DEST-PORT, PROTOCOL} not by {SRC-IP, SRC-PORT, DEST-IP, DEST-PORT} - Protocol is an important part of a socket's definition.
OS Process & Socket mapping: A process can be associated with (can open/can listen to) multiple sockets which might be obvious to many readers.
Example 1: Two clients connecting to same server port means: socket1 {SRC-A, 100, DEST-X,80, TCP} and socket2{SRC-B, 100, DEST-X,80, TCP}. This means host A connects to server X's port 80 and another host B also connects to the same server X to the same port 80. Now, how the server handles these two sockets depends on if the server is single-threaded or multiple-threaded (I'll explain this later). What is important is that one server can listen to multiple sockets simultaneously.
To answer the original question of the post:
Irrespective of stateful or stateless protocols, two clients can connect to the same server port because for each client we can assign a different socket (as the client IP will definitely differ). The same client can also have two sockets connecting to the same server port - since such sockets differ by SRC-PORT. With all fairness, "Borealid" essentially mentioned the same correct answer but the reference to state-less/full was kind of unnecessary/confusing.
To answer the second part of the question on how a server knows which socket to answer. First understand that for a single server process that is listening to the same port, there could be more than one socket (maybe from the same client or from different clients). Now as long as a server knows which request is associated with which socket, it can always respond to the appropriate client using the same socket. Thus a server never needs to open another port in its own node than the original one on which the client initially tried to connect. If any server allocates different server ports after a socket is bound, then in my opinion the server is wasting its resource and it must be needing the client to connect again to the new port assigned.
A bit more for completeness:
Example 2: It's a very interesting question: "can two different processes on a server listen to the same port". If you do not consider protocol as one of the parameters defining sockets then the answer is no. This is so because we can say that in such a case, a single client trying to connect to a server port will not have any mechanism to mention which of the two listening processes the client intends to connect to. This is the same theme asserted by rule (2). However, this is the WRONG answer because 'protocol' is also a part of the socket definition. Thus two processes in the same node can listen to the same port only if they are using different protocols. For example, two unrelated clients (say one is using TCP and another is using UDP) can connect and communicate to the same server node and to the same port but they must be served by two different server processes.
Server Types - single & multiple:
When a server processes listening to a port that means multiple sockets can simultaneously connect and communicate with the same server process. If a server uses only a single child process to serve all the sockets then the server is called single-process/threaded and if the server uses many sub-processes to serve each socket by one sub-process then the server is called a multi-process/threaded server. Note that irrespective of the server's type a server can/should always use the same initial socket to respond back (no need to allocate another server port).
Suggested Books and the rest of the two volumes if you can.
A Note on Parent/Child Process (in response to query/comment of 'Ioan Alexandru Cucu')
Wherever I mentioned any concept in relation to two processes say A and B, consider that they are not related by the parent-child relationship. OS's (especially UNIX) by design allows a child process to inherit all File-descriptors (FD) from parents. Thus all the sockets (in UNIX like OS are also part of FD) that process A listening to can be listened to by many more processes A1, A2, .. as long as they are related by parent-child relation to A. But an independent process B (i.e. having no parent-child relation to A) cannot listen to the same socket. In addition, also note that this rule of disallowing two independent processes to listen to the same socket lies on an OS (or its network libraries), and by far it's obeyed by most OS's. However, one can create own OS which can very well violate this restriction.
TCP / HTTP Listening On Ports: How Can Many Users Share the Same Port
So, what happens when a server listen for incoming connections on a TCP port? For example, let's say you have a web-server on port 80. Let's assume that your computer has the public IP address of 24.14.181.229 and the person that tries to connect to you has IP address 10.1.2.3. This person can connect to you by opening a TCP socket to 24.14.181.229:80. Simple enough.
Intuitively (and wrongly), most people assume that it looks something like this:
Local Computer | Remote Computer
--------------------------------
<local_ip>:80 | <foreign_ip>:80
^^ not actually what happens, but this is the conceptual model a lot of people have in mind.
This is intuitive, because from the standpoint of the client, he has an IP address, and connects to a server at IP:PORT. Since the client connects to port 80, then his port must be 80 too? This is a sensible thing to think, but actually not what happens. If that were to be correct, we could only serve one user per foreign IP address. Once a remote computer connects, then he would hog the port 80 to port 80 connection, and no one else could connect.
Three things must be understood:
1.) On a server, a process is listening on a port. Once it gets a connection, it hands it off to another thread. The communication never hogs the listening port.
2.) Connections are uniquely identified by the OS by the following 5-tuple: (local-IP, local-port, remote-IP, remote-port, protocol). If any element in the tuple is different, then this is a completely independent connection.
3.) When a client connects to a server, it picks a random, unused high-order source port. This way, a single client can have up to ~64k connections to the server for the same destination port.
So, this is really what gets created when a client connects to a server:
Local Computer | Remote Computer | Role
-----------------------------------------------------------
0.0.0.0:80 | <none> | LISTENING
127.0.0.1:80 | 10.1.2.3:<random_port> | ESTABLISHED
Looking at What Actually Happens
First, let's use netstat to see what is happening on this computer. We will use port 500 instead of 80 (because a whole bunch of stuff is happening on port 80 as it is a common port, but functionally it does not make a difference).
netstat -atnp | grep -i ":500 "
As expected, the output is blank. Now let's start a web server:
sudo python3 -m http.server 500
Now, here is the output of running netstat again:
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:500 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN -
So now there is one process that is actively listening (State: LISTEN) on port 500. The local address is 0.0.0.0, which is code for "listening for all". An easy mistake to make is to listen on address 127.0.0.1, which will only accept connections from the current computer. So this is not a connection, this just means that a process requested to bind() to port IP, and that process is responsible for handling all connections to that port. This hints to the limitation that there can only be one process per computer listening on a port (there are ways to get around that using multiplexing, but this is a much more complicated topic). If a web-server is listening on port 80, it cannot share that port with other web-servers.
So now, let's connect a user to our machine:
quicknet -m tcp -t localhost:500 -p Test payload.
This is a simple script (https://github.com/grokit/dcore/tree/master/apps/quicknet) that opens a TCP socket, sends the payload ("Test payload." in this case), waits a few seconds and disconnects. Doing netstat again while this is happening displays the following:
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:500 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN -
tcp 0 0 192.168.1.10:500 192.168.1.13:54240 ESTABLISHED -
If you connect with another client and do netstat again, you will see the following:
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:500 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN -
tcp 0 0 192.168.1.10:500 192.168.1.13:26813 ESTABLISHED -
... that is, the client used another random port for the connection. So there is never confusion between the IP addresses.
Normally, for every connecting client the server forks a child process that communicates with the client (TCP). The parent server hands off to the child process an established socket that communicates back to the client.
When you send the data to a socket from your child server, the TCP stack in the OS creates a packet going back to the client and sets the "from port" to 80.
Multiple clients can connect to the same port (say 80) on the server because on the server side, after creating a socket and binding (setting local IP and port) listen is called on the socket which tells the OS to accept incoming connections.
When a client tries to connect to server on port 80, the accept call is invoked on the server socket. This creates a new socket for the client trying to connect and similarly new sockets will be created for subsequent clients using same port 80.
Words in italics are system calls.
Ref
http://www.scs.stanford.edu/07wi-cs244b/refs/net2.pdf