I am relatively new to this and wanted to know if modems already come with ports or if they have to be installed. If not how does one find out how to find where they are.

There are two types of port physical ports and virtual port it depends on what you need to know. I think your asking about virtual ports like 80 = HTTP port, 21 = FTP port, 110 = POP3 port. If this is what your talking about them no you don’t have to install this type of port and depending on what type of service you have there may be very little you can do with them, like with a dial-up modem that use phone lines the ISP usually only allows you to use curtain ports and block the rest. But with some Cable services you have more options as they don’t block these port and this gives you greater freedom but at a cost. I’m not sure about DSL but with Cable modems most of the ISP’s don’t use there own routers to protect you like dial-up ISP do. This means that if you have a Cable modem and have no router or firewall you are completely open to attack from the Internet. As I said I’m unsure if this is the case with all high speed connection or just with Cable modem. Routers are not only used to protect you but they are what you use to control port. If you can give me a little more info on what you are trying to do or if you just want me to explain more about how this all works please let me know and I will help you out.