Re: Help with Mandatory & Forbidden services

David,

If I was to guess I suspect he is a network person thrown into iSeries, or 
an iSeries programmer who has been declared the 'expert' and now has to 
talk to the network people.  I'm basing it on the fact that his most 
recent question was about IP forwarding.  Like you I am still wondering. 
Suppose Mandatory is in the eyes of the beholder.  If you want your 
iSeries Access to work then I suppose those ports are mandatory.  I don't 
often lock down ports.  I leave that up to the network people via routers. 
 And IBM double checks them on a regular basis to make sure they're 
secure.  Granted, this flies in the face of the 'defense in depth' 
principle.

A few references:
NETSTAT *CNN
http://faq.midrange.com/data/cache/147.html
Sorry, no good reference on all ports.  NETSTAT is somewhat self 
documenting.
See also CFGTCP, 4. Work with TCP/IP port restrictions

Many of the networking commands were transported over from other OS's: 
NETSTAT, PING, etc.  They also have a traditional i5/OS name for people 
who think being standard is the devils spawn.  Personally I never would 
have thought of VFYTCPCNN.  Just to check, I just noticed a VRYAPPCCNN. So 
I guess it now makes sense.  Must be the i5/OS equivalent of aping.

Rob Berendt