question about RIPE DB

Dear all,

My name is Nguyen. I'm a newbee trying to deploy a RIPE database.
I have a simple question and would be appriciate to hear from you.
I've tried to search for the question but still could not find any answer.
My questions:

What is the purpose of the config port (default is 43002)?
When I started the whois_server, it allways listens on this port.
Is there any way to disable this or apply a authenticate mechanism on
this port ?

Thank you very much.