I’ve been working on increasing my technical knowledge and one of those is learning the ports that email, file transfers, and databases use. I have a hard time memorizing so I often use mnemonics to help me remember things. I thought I’d share some as an example so that you can consider using visual images to remember data. This is not all encompassing of course, but it has helped me remember some of the ports.
I’ve left out ports that I don’t have a useful mnemonic device for yet.
25 SMTP – unsecure email I think of how a stamp used to be 25c and mail associates to simple mail transport protocol.
465 SMTP w/ SSL Just as a normal letter used to be 25c a priority package at the post office is a lot more because it’s secure. Thus the increased cost i.e.: 465.
110 POP (POP3) unsecure emails I think of a mail man carrying a soda can. The two 1s are the legs of the carrier carrying ‘mail’.
143 IMAP – unsecure email I’m still working on this one but one thing that helps me remember is that the 1 looks like I. This is unsecure mail or “I feel insecure” to connect the 1 and then I just remember 43 signifying a possible age for mail carriers. Thus 1-43.
993 IMAP with SSL this image is of a mail man wearing heavy books 9’s upside down look like feet with boots. I know a stretch of imagination here but it works for me. You want to find things that work for you.
80 HTTP standard web browser. A friend came up with a brilliant memory device here. At the age of 80 is about the time you “Have To Pee” Thus HaveTotPee/HTTP
2082 cPanel port I use word association and imagery on this one. C panel or spoken out loud it would be See-Panel. Go vision is 2020. But you need a pair of glasses (the 8 looks like glasses to see the SeePanel. And you have two eyes so we get the 2, thus 2082. Sometimes the gyrations of remember something may be worse than memorizing but this is working for me so far.
43 Whois port People often go through a midlife crisis around the age 40 so with the number 43 I think of a person wondering Who is I, what am I doing with my life?
You might even make a game of it with your class. Some of my peers learned ports by how someone prompted them to remember it. One mnemonic can work for one and another for someone else. Something visual works very well, normally.
These are just a few ideas on how to remember ports and what they mean. If you have a better idea on how to remember this info, please feel free to share it in the comment section of this blog. Thanks.
