Hawk Software

Many people over the years have asked:

Why can’t I open more than (number usually varies from 3970 to 3974) sockets on Windows?

My response:

You have run into the ephemeral port limit on Windows.  Windows versions through XP and Server 2003 use a port range of 1024 though 5000 for ephemeral, or short-lived, ports.  These ports are the ones used if you call bind() on a socket and pass zero as the port number, allowing  Windows to assign a port for you.  This limit is not normally a problem, but usually manifests when testing the limits of programs.  In HawkNL I provide my own bind() which uses 1024 through 65535.  There is also a registry modification which can increase the range.