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GFI MailEssentials Port Description

Author: Luis Fernandes Updated

Overview

It is important to know about the ports which GFI MailEssentials is going to use in its operations. The ports used by GFI MailEssentials are common in all later versions.

The firewall may need to be configured to allow connections using DNS, FTP, HTTP, and HTTPS from the GFI MailEssentials machine to the update servers.

The information in this article will help the GFI MailEssentials users configure the firewall to allow the ports used by GFI MailEssentials.

 

Information

The following table describes the port numbers and their feature description.

Port numbers Description
53 - DNS

Used by the following anti-spam filters:

  • SPF
  • IP DNS Blocklist
  • SpamRazer
  • URI DNS Blocklist
20, 21 - FTP

In case of passive FTP ports 21 and a random port lower than 1024. The connection is done to ftp.gfisoftware.com to retrieve the latest version information.
80, 443 - HTTP

Used by GFI MailEssentials to download product patches and updates for:

  • SpamRazer
  • Anti-Phishing
  • Bayesian Analysis
  • Antivirus definition files
  • Trojan and executable scanner
  • Email Exploit engine

GFI MailEssentials downloads from the following locations:

  • meupdate.gfi.com
  • support.gfi.com
  • *.mailshell.net
  • *.rules.mailshell.net
  • spamrazer.gfi.com
  • db11.spamcatcher.net
  • gfi-downloader-137146314.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com
  • cdnupdate.gfi.com
  • cdnpatches.gfi.com

NOTE: GFI MailEssentials can also be configured to download updates through a proxy server. Refer to the Configuring Proxy Settings article for more information.
9090, 9091,  8015, - Remote

These ports are used for inter-process communication. No firewall configuration is required to allow connections to or from the remote ports since all the GFI MailEssentials processes run on the same server.

NOTE: Ensure that no other applications (except GFI MailEssentials) are listening on these ports. If other applications are using these ports, they can be changed. Refer to the Configuring Remoting Ports article for more information.
9095, 9096 - Multi-Server These TCP ports are used for communications between GFI MailEssentials servers that are joined to the Multi-Server network. Ensure that the master and all slave servers can communicate together via these ports.
389/636 -LDAP/LDAPS

This port is used in these scenarios:

  • Remote Active Directory mode - When the GFI MailEssentials server is not joined to an Active Directory domain but retrieves the list of users from a remote Active Directory instance.
  • GFI Directory mode - When the GFI MailEssentials server is not joined to an Active Directory domain but retrieves the list of users from GFI Directory instance.
  • Microsoft® Exchange environment - Required if the server running GFI MailEssentials does not have access to or cannot get the list of users from Active Directory, for example, in a DMZ environment or other environments which do not use Active Directory.
  • Lotus Domino mail server environment - Required to get email addresses from Lotus Domino server.
  • Other SMTP mail server environments - Required to get email addresses from SMTP server.
61000 TCP port used for the communication between GFI MailEssentials and GFI Directory. If the GFI Directory is used, ensure that no other applications (except GFI MailEssentials) are listening on this port. This ports can be changed from the Switchboard. Refer to the Configuring Remote Active Directory Mode article for more information.