port

port, harbor

port, a natural or artificial harbor and its terminal facilities for the transfer of goods and passengers to or from waterborne means of transport. Port cities are located on oceans, lakes, rivers, and canals in places where access to the hinterland provides a large volume of commerce. The importance of a port depends on the availability of transportation and on the extent of terminal facilities such as wharfs, storage space, and machinery. See also free port.

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port, wine

port [from Oporto], fortified wine made in Portugal from grapes grown in the Douro valley; Portuguese law allows only this wine to be called port. Various grapes are blended by the growers, and brandy is added before fermentation is complete. In the spring the casks are brought to Oporto and Villa Nova, where the wines are blended and stored. Vintage port is wine of an exceptional year, kept in cask for two or three years, then matured in bottles—much of it for 25 years. Ruby port, generally a blend of wines of different vintages, is stored in wood and bottled before it loses its clear, red color. Tawny port remains longer in the cask, losing some color and alcohol. Crusted port is vintage or ruby port kept in bottles until it has formed a crustlike sediment. So-called white port is a sweet, amber-colored port matured in wood. Port is sometimes artificially colored with caramelized wine or berry juice.

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port

Input/output conduit for personal computers. The serial port was created as an interface between data terminal equipment and data-communications equipment. It processes data sequentially, as a series of bits, and is used to connect equipment (e.g., a modem or mouse) to the computer. The parallel port processes several data bits in parallel and is used to connect peripherals such as computer printers and optical scanners to the computer. The parallel port is faster, but the serial port is cheaper and requires less power. See also USB.

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port

Sweet, fortified wine of rich taste and aroma made in Portugal. The name derives from Porto, the town where it is traditionally aged and bottled. Most port is red, but lesser amounts of tawny and white are produced. Peculiar to the manufacture of port is a large dose of brandy given to the still-fermenting liquid (called must). Much time, often decades, is needed for the maturing of fine ports.

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port

(1) See TCP/IP port.

(2) To convert software to run in a different computer environment. For example, the phrase "to port the application to Unix," means to make the necessary changes in the program to enable it to run under Unix.

(3) A pathway into and out of the computer or a network device such as a hub, switch or router. There are numerous ports on the back of every desktop computer for hooking up the keyboard, mouse, modem, printer and network. Laptops have many ports as well, because external monitors, keyboards and mice are generally supported. On network devices, the ports are for communications, typically connecting Ethernet cables or telephone lines. See port speed, line card, serial port, parallel port and PC input/output.

A Lotta Ports

A PC could have even more ports than the 15 pictured here. Additional USB ports are quite common on the front of PCs, and FireWire may be available, which is not shown here.

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port¹

a town or place alongside navigable water with facilities for the loading and unloading of ships

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port²

a. the left side of an aircraft or vessel when facing the nose or bow

b. (as modifier): the port bow

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port³

a sweet fortified dessert wine

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port⁴

1. Nautical

a. an opening in the side of a ship, fitted with a watertight door, for access to the holds

b. See porthole

2. an aperture, esp one controlled by a valve, by which fluid enters or leaves the cylinder head of an engine, compressor, etc.

3. Electronics a logic circuit for the input and ouput of data

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port

fortified sweet wine made from grapes grown in the Douro valley in Portugal. [Port. Hist.: NCE, 2194]

See : Wine

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port - 1. A logical channel or channel endpoint in a communications system. The Transmission Control Protocol and User Datagram Protocol transport layer protocols used on Ethernet use port numbers to distinguish between (demultiplex) different logical channels on the same network interface on a computer. Each application program has a unique port number associated with it, defined in /etc/services or the Network Information Service "services" database. Some protocols, e.g. telnet and HTTP (which is actually a special form of telnet) have default ports specified as above but can use other ports as well. Some port numbers are defined in RFC 3232 (which replaces RFC 1700). Ports are now divided into: "Well Known" or "Privileged", and "Ephemeral" or "Unprivileged" (comprising "Registered", "Dynamic", "Private").