Web Hosting Help - Managed Servers

Well, when you run services or applications that your clients can connect to and use, it would often require a port on the managed server to be open to establish a connection. For example, in order to serve web pages from your managed server you would need to open port 80 as this is the default. All browsers, such as, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera and others know this. So, when a visitors request a page from a web site hosted on your managed web server, it establishes a connection to the web server software i.e. Apache, IIS on port 80, checks if the request is valid, and sends the requested page(s) or file(s).

Now, if you need to install any software that needs binding to a certain port number and want to determine if it is operational or not, you can monitor it. This is what your web host is asking; do you operate any software or services - needing a port to be open - that needs to be monitored? In most cases, if the web host detects that the port number that you specified is not open or responding to requests then they will contact you regarding the issue. It is one of the many advantages of managed server web hosting.