Telephone Interview

On Wednesday I had a telephone interview for a Network Administrator position with Sprint in Reston, Virginia.

I think it went well. I was mad at myself for not giving a good answer to one particular question that I was asked because even though I did not know the answer I had studied the material and could have given an answer that sounded much more intelligent.

I was asked "What is the port number of BGP?".

Even though I had not memorized the port number of BGP I had studied well known port numbers with Chris Bryant and I had spent a good amount of time memorizing well known port numbers.

I basically choked on the question and didn't even realize that it was a simple question about well known port numbers, and I just said, "I don't know."

I wish I would have answered what I had been studying. I would have said....

"Well, I have not committed the BGP port number to memory because it was not mentioned in my training. However, I do understand that all port numbers below 1024 are reserved, well known port numbers and I have memorized 13 of them.

For TCP I know the following....
ftp 20,21
ssh 22
telnet 23
smtp 25
http 80
pop3 110
ssl 443

For UDP I know the following....
DHCP 67, 69
TFTP 69
SNMP 161

And I also know that port 53 is reserved for DNS on both TCP and UDP, and port 24 is reserved for private mail systems on both TCP and UDP.

I also know that the range of UDP ports for VOIP is 16,384 through 32, 767."

I knew that, and I wish I would have said that, but I choked.

Oh well, that's how interviews go sometimes I guess.

The port number for BGP is 179.