Ports for Ethernet/Mail (software or hardware)?

[sotied]

OK. This might be in the wrong category, but bear with me.

I'm trying to send mail from Mail from an iBook on a work network. Gmail tells me to set up my ports as 587 and my ISP tells me to use port 25.

Are these ports just random numbers or is there a real assignment for each port? I remember using port 80 for some email stuff in the past and now I'm sunk a world of 110, 25, 995, 587 and more.

Any ideas??

ALSO, I've already gotten great help from Munkle, so I want to give props for the advice that's gotten me this far.

Jeff

 

[robbieduncan]

Port 80 is almost always used for http. This list lists the "normal" usage of a lot of port numbers.

 

[Santiago]

For mail, the relevant ports are:

25 smtp
110 pop3
143 imap
993 secure pop3 using TLS/SSL
995 secure imap using TLS/SSL

 

[superbovine]

OK. This might be in the wrong category, but bear with me.

I'm trying to send mail from Mail from an iBook on a work network. Gmail tells me to set up my ports as 587 and my ISP tells me to use port 25.

Are these ports just random numbers or is there a real assignment for each port? I remember using port 80 for some email stuff in the past and now I'm sunk a world of 110, 25, 995, 587 and more.

Any ideas??

ALSO, I've already gotten great help from Munkle, so I want to give props for the advice that's gotten me this far.

Jeff

maybe ISP are blocking port 25 to external mail servers which means you can recieve mail but not send. gmail maybe using 587 to get around this problem.