and i'm not completely computer-obtuse. hell, i was rolling my own bioses for CP/M a while back. so maybe i can get over this hump.

ok. is the port number analogous to like a subsidiary address? the packet arrives at the company firewall or whatever and it sees the port number and routes it to the email server or whatever? why is that better than just the address of the email server?

and when it's all one computer, like my home PC, what's the use of different ports when the same processor is going to handle it no matter what?

boggled.