[OpenIndiana-discuss] Holding port numbers for servers

[Jim Klimov]

Back in the old days when internet authors thought that there was
going to be not much server software, they created IANA to track
registered ports for some apps, and the general convention was
that ports under 1024 are reserved, and ports above that are to
be issued freely to any networked app on the system. Lots has
happened since then, and ports "above" are often typically used
by servers too, i.e. 8080 for appservers or squid, etc.

I've (rarely) had problems starting some appservers because a
network client running on the same OS was randomly issued the
needed port number for its communications.

I haven't seen this behavior for a while, so wanted to ask: are
there now any provisions NOT to issue certain ports (i.e. list
from /etc/services) when an applications opens a client socket?
That is, the listed ports should only be issued if the app binds
itself to this port number explicitly.

If this is catered for already - cool; if not - I think it is a
worthy RFE...

Thanks,
//Jim Klimov