How to increase ephemeral port allowances

11/29/2018 10:30 PM

11/29/2018 10:30 PM

By default, Microsoft windows limit the port utilization that can be spun up for a TCP connection. They limit it by making it so that the server uses ports between 1024 and 5000.  This can oftentimes cause issues on the Orion server due to the number of open connections that we require in order to gather up all the information that we need from nodes.

The error that you will end up seeing if you are running into this problem is generally as follows: 

An operation on a socket could not be performed because the system lacked sufficient buffer space or because a queue was full.   

You can increase the number of ports that the Windows server is able to utilize.

Server Application Monitor

In order to increase the port allowance within windows, please do the following:

1. Click start -> run
2. Type in Regedit and hit enter.
3. Once the Regedit has opened, navigate to the following key and right-click on Parameters:

   • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters

4. Select New -> DWORD (32) bit value.
5. Once the new value has been created, rename it to MaxUserPort (** Be aware that the capitalization matters).
6. Right-click the new setting and select Modify.
7. Put a tick mark in the Decimal section under Base, and then input a value between 5000 and 65534 in the Value data section.  The number you input in there will be the port number that Windows is now allowed to go up to in the connection utilization.
8. Exit the registry editor and reboot the server.

 For more information, you may visit: 

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc938196.aspx

Pushing out the port allowances is not a true fix in most cases. Please see the following article to troubleshoot the cause of the increased TCP port usage:

Check the number of ephemeral ports in use

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