Computer hardware ports and software ports, both facilitate the computer to communicate with the outside world. Basically they are interfaces to the external world.
Hardware Ports:
1. Those openings you see on the back and front of your system unit.
2. They allow you to connect various peripheral devices to your computer. (eg. USB Storage Device, display unit, headphones, etc.)
3. They have addresses which are used by the operating system and system drivers to communicate with them.
4. Application software see them as devices where as the operating system handles the background process of proper addressing to the ports through the system bus and chip set on your motherboard.
Software Ports:
1. They are intangible, as in you cannot see them.
2. They allow your computer to interface with the outside world just as hardware ports.
3. These ports usually represent an opening to a network your computer is connected to.
4. Software ports usually refer to the communication ports opened up with the TCP/IP protocol suit, or any other communication protocol suit you use for networking.
5. The port range for TCP/IP (the usual software port collection) is 0-65535. (0-1023: Well known ports, 1024-49151: Registered services ports, 49152-65535: Unreserved ports)
[h=3]Source(s):
How computer hardware ports are different from Computer software ports? - Yahoo! Answers[/h]
List of TCP and UDP port numbers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia