SO_PORT_SCALABILITY

The SO_PORT_SCALABILITY socket option enables local port scalability for a socket.

SO_PORT_SCALABILITY

0x3006

The SO_PORT_SCALABILITY socket option enables local port scalability by allowing port allocation to be maximized by allocating wildcard ports multiple times for different local address port pairs on a local machine.

Remarks

Note: on platforms where both SO_PORT_SCALABILITY and SO_REUSE_UNICASTPORT are supported, prefer to use SO_REUSE_UNICASTPORT.

Proxy server environments have scalability issues because of limited local port availability. One way to work around this is to add more IP addresses to the machine. However, by default wildcard ports used with the bind function are limited to the size of the dynamic port range on the local machine (up to 64K ports, but usually less) no matter the number of IP addresses on the local machine. Working around this requires the application to maintain its own port pool either with port reservation or by using heuristics.

To avoid having every application that requires scalability manage its own port pool, and to allow for greater scalability while maintaining application compatibility, Windows Server 2008 introduced the SO_PORT_SCALABILITY socket option to help maximize wildcard port allocation. Port allocation is maximized by allowing an application to allocate wildcard ports for each unique local address and port pair. So if a local machine has four IP addresses, then up to 256 K wildcard ports (64 K ports × 4 IP addresses) can be allocated by wildcard bind function requests.

When the SO_PORT_SCALABILITY socket option is set on a socket and a call to the bind function is made for a specified address and wildcard port (the name parameter is set with a specific address and a port of 0), Winsock will allocate a port for the specified address. This allocation will be based on all of the possible IP addresses and ports/per address on the local computer. If a wildcard port is acquired using the SO_PORT_SCALABILITY option, that port cannot be allocated by another socket without the SO_PORT_SCALABILITY option. This restriction is in place to avoid backward-compatibility problems with applications that assume a wildcard local port cannot be reused. Note that this means that applications which acquire a large number of ports using SO_PORT_SCALABILITY can starve legacy applications of ports. If all available ephemeral ports have been acquired for at least one address with SO_PORT_SCALABILITY , then no more wildcard port allocations are possible without the socket option.

To have any effect, the SO_PORT_SCALABILITY option must be set before the bind function is called. An example of how this would be used on a computer with two addresses is outlined below:

• The socket function is called by a process to create a socket.
• The setsockopt function is called to enable the SO_PORT_SCALABILITY socket option on the newly created socket.
• The bind function is called to do a bind on one of the local computer's IP addresses and port 0.
• The connect function is then called to connect to a remote IP address. The socket is used by the application as needed.
• A socket function is called by the same process (possibly a different thread) to create a second socket.
• The setsockopt function is called to enable the SO_PORT_SCALABILITY socket option on the newly created second socket.
• The bind function is called with the local computer's second IP address and port 0. Even when all ports have been previously allocated, this call succeeds because there are multiple IP addresses available on the local computer and the SO_PORT_SCALABILITY socket option was set on both sockets in the same process.
• The connect function is then called to connect to a remote IP address. The second socket is used by the application as needed.

Requirements

See also

getsockopt

setsockopt

SOL_SOCKET Socket Options

Socket Options