[otterley]

Of all the SSH servers in the world, what percentage are listening on a port other than 22? To answer this question, you can visit https://data-status.shodan.io/ports.html and see for yourself.

By "unusual," I literally mean "not usual/not typical." Not "never happens."

[gsich]

I fail to see how this is relevant.

[otterley]

I'll explain it once again, then leave this thread:

Companies frequently put egress network policies in place that confine certain protocols like SSH and HTTP to certain ports. They do this in order to achieve compliance with regulations, to achieve security or operational certifications, or simply because they're paranoid. It's not necessarily the least restrictive means of accomplishing their goals, but that's what they do. And if they're big enough, they're going to use the size of the deal and their brand equity to persuade their vendors, who might ordinarily prefer to offer a service on a nonstandard port, to provide it on the customer's preferred port instead.

If you still don't understand, I'm sorry, but I cannot assist further.

[gsich]

Companies might do that. They have the right to do so. If they still want to use that service, they will find a way to use it. Be it by vendor-coercing or simpler methods.

Just because those companies exist, does not mean that their shitty practices have any imapct on real internet connections. If you as a paying ISP customer want to use a custom port or whatever, it is going to work. So you as a developer don't have any restriction (which you don't know anyway beforehand) if you are developing a solution for a problem.

"Middleboxes" is a hackernews meme that is thrown around because people here work at places who restrict stuff and they can't bother to change that situation but instead complain about it.

The fact that games exist and they use all kind of ports is proof that this is not a problem for normal networks.