As part of our ongoing commitment to simplify the process of building and running applications at the edge, Azion is pleased to announce changes to Edge Application that will make deployment more flexible. Starting today, we have expanded port access for Edge Application.
Ports are used in networking to define endpoints for different delivery protocols. Specific port numbers are assigned by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and used to identify services so that packets can be easily forwarded to applications. Previously, when customers would create an edge application in Real-Time Manager, their applications could only connect to ports 80 (HTTP) or 443 (HTTPS), which are the default ports used by the industry and supported in our delivery protocols.
Although ports 80 and 443 are the two main web ports, they are by no means the only ones accessed—or needed—by developers today. These two ports, along with other port numbers ranging from 0 to 1023, are part of the well-known port numbers, which can only be opened by services running root or administrator privileges, a restriction that can complicate setup for users without these super permissions. In addition, multiple programs using the same port number on the same IP address and protocol can result in application failures known as port conflicts.
To avoid conflicts and gain flexibility, developers and services often make use of another class of ports known as registered ports. Ranging from 1024 to 49151, these port numbers have less strict requirements than the well-known ports, and are assigned by the IANA for specific services, such as Apache Tomcat, which runs on port 8080 (HTTP) and 8443 (HTTPS) by default. In our previous setup, Azion customers in this scenario would need to change Apache Tomcat’s default settings. By allowing expanded access to alternate HTTP and HTTPS ports, our Edge Application team has simplified deployment and provided customers with more flexibility in these use cases.
Starting today, the full list of ports supported by Edge Application will include:
HTTP:
- 80 (default)
- 8008
- 8080
HTTPS:
- 443 (default)
- 8443
- 9440
- 9441
- 9442
- 9443
Configuration of custom port access is simple. As before, ports 80 and 443 serve as the default ports for HTTP and HTTPS. To choose an alternate port, customers only need to select the desired port from the drop-down list provided in the Real-Time Manager.
At Azion, we know that agile development is incredibly important to modern businesses, and we hope with this new change, we can continue to support our customers’ fast-paced, flexible deployment needs. To learn more about these changes, view our documentation page, read up on the basics of HTTP in this blog post, or create a free account to try out Edge Application for yourself.
