Ports being used by Team Explorer to chat with TFS

I needed to find out which ports were being used by Team Explorer to communicate with the TFS server.

With Team Explorer 2008 and TFS 2008, I found that the following ports were being used

80
8080
microsoft-ds (445)

The first two were being used by devenv.exe (Visual Studio). The last one (microsoft-ds) was being used by the system (not sure why this port is being used – but I suspect it might be TFS shell integration power-toys that are using it, as the communications is being initiated by [system]).

So, if you need to open a firewall between your client machines and the TFS server, I would start with the above 3 ports associated with your TFS server address.

Other useful information:

Read the topic “Ports required during installation” in the TFSInstall Guide.

TFS Server Ports: http://dotnet.org.za/willy/archive/2007/11/20/team-foundation-server-tfs-ports-where-is-what.aspx