This is my last post on this subject as we are straying far away from the list charter...
For those on NT (SP3) or WIN2K or WIN2K3... Please see metalink note: http://metalink.oracle.com/metalink/plsql/ml2_documents.showDocument?p_d atabase_id=NOT&p_id4140.1 (line probably wraps)
It tells you how to set up your windows listener so that it only uses port 1521 (or whatever port you want) to handle database connections. No port/connection hand-off and no special firewall setup.
Unix on the other hand appears to default to shared socket behavior except when using multi-threaded-server or SSL encrypted sqlnet connections. With MTS or SSL it does indeed spin-off the connection to a different port. See http://metalink.oracle.com/metalink/plsql/ml2_documents.showDocument?p_d atabase_id=NOT&p_id5021.1 (line wraps) for more info on running sqlnet through a firewall.
We run the use_shared_socket setting on all our windows servers running Oracle and we block all non-1521 connections from our clients to our SuSE-oracle boxes. So, as another poster said, it's all configurable.
Please note also that some firewalls have a tendency to drop tcp connections if no packets traverse the network for a certain period of time. In those cases you can usually program the firewall to "keep alive" all inbound 1521 connections. Or you can also use sqlnet's "tcp_nodelay" and "expire_time" parameters to try (sometimes firewalls still kill the connections) to keep the packets flowing at the SQL*Net layer even if the client isn't requesting any data.
We choose the simpler "everyone talks to 1521 for everything" method because our users cross numerous firewalls that we do not control.
Andy
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