# What happens if we don't provide ports for hosts in field discovery.zen.ping.unicast inside elasticsearch.yml?
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-happens-if-we-dont-provide-ports-for-hosts-in-field-discovery-zen-ping-unicast-inside-elasticsearch-yml/29516
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [September 17, 2015, 8:11pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-happens-if-we-dont-provide-ports-for-hosts-in-field-discovery-zen-ping-unicast-inside-elasticsearch-yml/29516 "2015-09-17T20:11:13Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@chaudharikiranp](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/chaudharikiranp)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2015, 8:11pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-happens-if-we-dont-provide-ports-for-hosts-in-field-discovery-zen-ping-unicast-inside-elasticsearch-yml/29516/1 "2015-09-17T20:11:13Z")
What happens if we don't provide ports for hosts in field discovery.zen.ping.unicast inside elasticsearch.yml?
When we do have 2 VMs and 2 hosts names listed in discovery.zen.ping.unicast, ES is creating 4 nodes , 2 for each host with 9300 and 9301 ports. I am not getting why its like this?
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### Author:  [@tinle](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/tinle)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2015, 8:24pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-happens-if-we-dont-provide-ports-for-hosts-in-field-discovery-zen-ping-unicast-inside-elasticsearch-yml/29516/2 "2015-09-17T20:24:29Z")
This is correct. If you do not provide a port, ES will start on default port of 9300, and if that port is already taken, it will try to the next one (9300++) until it finds one that is available.
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 5, 2017, 11:49pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-happens-if-we-dont-provide-ports-for-hosts-in-field-discovery-zen-ping-unicast-inside-elasticsearch-yml/29516/3 "2017-07-05T23:49:36Z")