Check Which TCP/IP Ports Are in Use in Windows 8 to Secure Your PC

When we want an application to be connected to the internet, then each application needs to use an available port or socket. Until the application is terminated, the application uses that port to communicate and transfer data over the internet. Some applications have dedicated ports, like HTTP, FTP, SMTP. Some applications do not have any dedicated ports. When they want to connect to the internet they occupy any random available port. To know which application is running on which port number then you have to follow these steps:

Step 1: Open the Task Manager by pressing Alt, Ctrl and Delete simultaneously.



Step 2: Click on the File Tab and then select Run New Task:



Step 3: The RUN window will pop up; in there type cmd into the input area:



Step 4: Check the box below to "Create this task with administrative privileges". It indicates you have administrative privilege.



Step 5: A command Prompt will appear and in the command prompt type
netstat -aon | more and press Enter.



Step 6: Now you can see a table where the Local Address column will show you the port address and the PID column will show the Process Identifier number of the process. This PID is unique for each and every process.



Step 7: Now, open Task Manager and navigate to the Services tab; there you can see the PIDs of all running programs.We can see that the RpcEptMapper application holds the PID 752 and the application is currently running.



Thus we can easily identify which port is listening to which program and what are the available ports.