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HTTP has some well-known alternative ports, like 8080, etc.

If I need to deploy any service which is served through secure HTTP, or maybe I need to assign any port to a HTTPS service on my local machine, but I already have another HTTPS service handling the 443 port, is there any convention about which port to use?

Side note: this question was posted for reference means since the answer was already posted to a question, but that question was not asking exactly that - anyway the answer was collecting lots of positive votes.

Áxel Costas Pena
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    But note that no matter what non-443 port you choose, it will have to be included in the URL. There is no "default fallback". Still, using something like https-alt (8443) is common enough that it may save you some trouble with things like firewalls. – Thilo Sep 09 '15 at 11:31
  • Yes, the non-default behavior is what made the answer below invalid to the original question. – Áxel Costas Pena Sep 09 '15 at 13:40

4 Answers4

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There is no standard about that, but port 8443 is sometimes known as the https-alt, and it seems the only one being popularly used as alternative HTTPS port.

It may have become popular because of mod_nss (an HTTPD module alternative to mod_ssl) using it on its default configuration.

Craig McQueen
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Áxel Costas Pena
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As already stated, there is no official alternative HTTPS port. It's up to you which port to use, but port 8443 seems to be quite common.

Personally I like to use 443xx with xx being any 2‑digit number, e.g. 44301. According to the Wikipedia list of TCP/UDP port numbers, the ports 44300–44399 are unused. (For multiple HTTP ports I use 80xx in the same way. 8008 and 8080 are officially alternative ports for HTTP.)

Note that I use such alternative ports only for temporary or personal web services. If you want to run multiple web services on the same IP in production, I suggest you to set up a SNI proxy such as sniproxy. (However, if your webservices are all running on the same web server such as Apache, setting up virtual hosts is sufficient.)

myrdd
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  • Port 591 is also [http-alt](https://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-port-numbers/service-names-port-numbers.xhtml?search=http-alt). – Paul Mar 04 '22 at 16:54
  • @Paul Note that the description for port 591 is ”FileMaker, Inc. - HTTP Alternate“. – myrdd Feb 27 '23 at 10:02
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If by standard you mean something associated with published standards, such as those published by the IETF or ICANN, then the answer is no, there is no published standard alternative to HTTPS port 443.

The IANA Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry includes a search function and searches for 443, https, tls, and ssl do not report any alternatives for HTTPS ports.

Paul
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Its an old question but port 4443 can be used as an alternate port for 443 for HTTPS because the x443 makes it clear its HTTPS and the 4 is just something like the HTTP 80 port range that is used in 8080-...

Herman Van Der Blom
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  • Can you give the source of this information please? – Eric Aya Jul 06 '21 at 11:15
  • i saw it used in the mediasoup demo for video conferencing. i thought it seems logical like for http sometimes the 8080 range is used as alternative. thats why its an clear alternative. you cant use 8443 because that would imply http. You can use whatever port off course you like but this is a "clear" port. So its more like an convention. – Herman Van Der Blom Jul 06 '21 at 12:49