Running HTTP server on non-standard port - consequences?

Question

I have a web server for HTML and Flash and a COMET server. Only the Flash stuff will ever talk to the COMET server.

I'm considering running both server on the same machine. If I would do so, I would have to use different ports for each server: 80 for the web server, something else for the COMET server (I think using the web server as reverse proxy would not play very well with COMET).

What would be the consequences of running the COMET server on a port != 80?

I'm particularly concerned about people behind firewalls. Do you know of people or organizations that block outgoing connections other than 80? Is this common? Besides that, will the use of an alternate port for HTTP cause other complications that I am not aware of?

Answer 1

yes - i do know quite a few organizations that have strict [ and stupid.. ] access rules, besides applying content control on the proxy level they also do not allow traffic to non-standard ports.

this is both education institutions and companies.

maybe you can put on port 80 lighttpd or nginx as a reverse proxy and then locally run your appserv [ apache or anything else on one port, comet on another and have proxy redirect requests to appropriate application ]. i believe those two proxies will play much nicer with COMET than typical web server [ like apache ] would.

btw - look here.

Answer 2

It is possible to run several servers on the same port and machine. Just add a extra IP-address for every server and let them listen on the different IPs.