[CentOS] 2.6 Kernel Differences

I am running CentOS 4, and trying to get an unsupported program running on
it.  This program makes a lot of socket calls and has to run as an
unprivileged user.  I think I remember reading somewhere that the 2.6
kernel requires superuser rights for some socket operations.  Is there a
way to disable this in the 2.6 kernel?  Which ports require the superuser
rights?

Thanks,
Doug