The Remote Loader executable communicates with running instances over TCP/IP (by default using port 8000 or some other TCP port which binds only to a loopback address), which is referred to as the command port. The Remote Loader and the Identity Manager Engine communicate over a second, communication, port. That is, events in the Identity Vault or in the connected system are transferred between the Remote Loader and the Identity Manager Engine on a different port than commands to start or stop the Remote Loader. During normal operation the Remote Loader will start, listen for a connection on the instance's connection port, and once connected, load the application shim. If the TCP/IP connection is temporarily lost between the Remote Loader instance and the Identity Manager Engine instance, the Remote Loader will continue listening for further connection attempts assuming the connection was not lost because of the Remote Loader being unloaded. The Remote Loader is capable of hosting Identity Manager application shims contained in platform-specific files through JNI, as well as the more-common Identity Manager application shims contained in platform-agnostic JAR files. The Remote Loader can run on any platform, though platform-specific shims must be run on their native platform (for example,.so files on Linux/Unix).