Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] Quick Question from a very novice user
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Darwin Roach S. wrote:
Hello, a friend of mine and I were doing some captures on a VoIP ATA 
device to find out which port the TFTP client was using to connect to 
it´s TFTP Server (supposed to be 69), but when we saw the capture we 
noticed that the capture showed a strange port as source port, like 
1134 or something (is not that one but something like that) and the 
destination port was indeed 69, no I don´t get that, shouldn´t the 
request come from the same por 69?, otherwise how can I set a firewall 
for instance to block or allow that service in a network if the source 
port is random or not 69?.
 My friend tells me that it seems logical and said that even Http 
would go out with any source port from the computer but as destination 
por 80 for instance, then the NAT does it´s job and expects the answer 
into that very port 80 from the web, but then translated the port 80 
into the source port (any port other than 80) the original computer 
has for that request. All of that doesn´t seem logical to me because 
I´ve set many firewalls up and I know that if I block port 69 from LAN 
to WAN then nobody will be able to use TFTP for instance same for port 
80 for HTTP and any other port, and the blocking can be from inside 
the network to the outside or viceversa.
 
Can somebody please clarify this to me?
 
We used a RJ-45 Grandstream ATA for VoIP, connected into a network 
card in a SUSE linux computer and that same computer connected into 
the internet with another  card, so we could make the capture.
 
Thanks and sorry if I am being too basic or if the questions seems 
stupid :)
The server will listen to packets on the tftp port 69. The client can 
choose any port it likes, usually a "random" port above around 1024 is 
used, that's how TCP and UDP works.
Please note that when sending packets the client will use the 
*destination* port 69, while the server uses *source* port 69 for the 
same "connection". So the source port is always the one the packet is 
coming from.
Both firewall and NAT will know the direction of the traffic so it's a 
different thing if the packet is coming from the LAN or the WAN.
Regards, ULFL