Programmatically determine free port in a webpart

Question

When we create a new web application in SharePoint from Central Admin,we see that a free port is automatically populated. Is there a good way to determine the free ports like SharePoint does?

Answer 1

The way SharePoint does it is to generate a random number, which it then tests to see if the port is in use on the local machine.

If you have .NET Reflector, check out SPGlobalAdmin.GenerateRandomPort(int initialValue) in

Assembly: Microsoft.SharePoint.dll

Namespace: Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration