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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-22T12:05:17+00:00

I’m writing a windows service which will expose an http RESTful web service for

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I’m writing a windows service which will expose an http RESTful web service for other processes on the machine. This will be deployed to lots of machines on various corporate desktops that I have little/no control over. How should I choose which port my service should listen on?

I’ll make it configurable, but need to know how to choose some reasonable default(s).

fyi I’m planning on using .NET 3.5 (unable to use 4.0 for deployment reasons) and WCF with WCF REST Starter Toolkit.

UPDATE: to clarify, these are corporate non-development machines. I want to choose a port that’s not likely to be used for anything else. I guess from this list of PORT NUMBERS (thanks @Pascal Thivent) that I should choose one in the dynamic/private range

The Dynamic and/or Private Ports are those from 49152 through 65535

So is there any better way of choosing a port within that range, or do I just choose randomly?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Ultimately we chose an arbitrary unused port in the Registered Port range – from 1024 through 49151 – and then made it configurable on the offchance someone comes along and uses that port for something else. Best solution would then be to register that port.

    We chose not to use a dynamic port as processes are able to arbitrarily start using them, so it’d be less consistent whether the port was available.

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