> That one port for general Web services might be best kept away from port 80
> for a number of reasons; it is conceptually distinct from the human oriented
> communications on port 80, for a start.
>
> But an HTTP-based protocol for, say, instant messaging should have a port
> unto itself where firewall admins can selectively enable or disable incoming
> traffic to their workstation cluster!
Also to allow more effective ACLs and state handling of the traffic. HTTP
traffic posting to a web page might be filtered, managed, cached or otherwise
handled in ways entirely unsuitable for, say, streamed data. Especially if
'purpose built' hardware starts evolving...
-Bill Kearney
