The Netstat Package

netstat allows you to easily view which TCP ports are in use and which are free to use.

Load library

# library(devtools)
# install_github("stevecondylios/netstat")
library(netstat)

See which TCP ports are in use

ports_in_use()

##  [1] "46915" "57416" "34403" "57403" "57399" "57398" "1538"  "57194"
##  [9] "57191" "57190" "56557" "57188" "57187" "57184" "57183" "56558"
## [17] "55205" "16233" "63415" "13287" "*"     "61348" "1025"  "1024" 
## [25] "55651" "51313" "63238" "58336" "56395" "45112" "30666" "58154"
## [33] "50712" "65415" "65413" "63546" "57146" "56677" "49445" "5432" 
## [41] "49160" "49155" "49157" "49156" "49154" "49153" "57414" "62782"
## [49] "64779" "5353"  "3722"  "50695" "59848" "58010" "55522" "57882"
## [57] "55719" "59190" "59189" "138"   "137"

Find a free TCP port using free_port().

free_port()

## [1] 14415

free_port(random=T)

## [1] 11195

• free_port() returns a TCP port from Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) listed unassigned ports.

• Any TCP port being used by the local machine will not be returned (so free_port() can be used to allocate a free port programmatically in applications without collisions)