inet ports allocation

[Tho Tran]

q1.  Is there a way to find out whether a port number is used before 
doing a "bind"?  As of now, you can only find out either EADDRINUSE or
EADDRNOTAVAIL when you do a bind or connect.

q2.  If the answer is no to the q1, is there a "better" and sure way to 
dynamically allocate port numbers by a known server so that two 
processes can establish a communication path with a minimum number of retrial?

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.


-tho
 tho%swevax.uconn.csnet at csnet-relay