Ports
Applies to: 
Visual Studio 
Visual Studio for Mac
Note
This article applies to Visual Studio 2017. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here
In the debugger architecture, a port:
Is a container for a set of processes running on a server. For example, a port might represent a connection to a Windows CE-based device by a serial cable or to a networked non-DCOM machine. One special port, called the local port, contains all the processes running on the local machine.
Can identify itself by name or identifier.
Can enumerate all processes running on the port and launch and terminate these processes.
Is represented by an IDebugPort2 interface, which is created by passing an IDebugPortRequest2 argument to AddPort.
Visual Studio supplies a default port that handles all Windows-based processes, both native and managed. A custom port must be set up for connections with external devices that are not Windows-based. To supply such custom ports, you must also set up a custom port supplier.