Port 2325: Design Space License Manager — The engineering simulation handshake

What Port 2325 Does

Port 2325 belongs to the registered port range (1024–49151). IANA assigned it the name designspace-lm — short for Design Space License Manager.

In practice, it was the dedicated port for Ansys Licensing Interconnect (ansysli_server), a component of the license management infrastructure for Ansys simulation software. When an engineer launched Ansys Mechanical, Ansys Fluent, or Ansys SpaceClaim, the client software reached out to a license server to check whether a valid floating license was available. Port 2325 was that conversation.¹

The architecture used three ports:

• 1055 — the FlexLM license manager (lmgrd)
• 2325 — the Ansys Licensing Interconnect service (ansysli_server)
• A dynamically assigned vendor daemon port

All three had to be open through firewalls for clients on remote networks to check out licenses.

Historical Status

Starting with Ansys 2021 R1, the ansysli_server process and port 2325 were retired. Applications now communicate exclusively through lmgrd and ansyslmd. Systems running Ansys 2020 R2 or earlier still depend on port 2325.²

If you're troubleshooting license failures on older Ansys installations, "fail to bind socket to port 2325" is a known error message indicating a port conflict or the service failed to start.³

Security History

Port 2325 has been noted in some security databases as having been associated with malware activity in the past. This is a historical flag — it does not mean the port is inherently dangerous. Any port can be used by malware; what matters is what's actually listening on it in your environment.

What Range This Port Belongs To

The registered port range (1024–49151) sits between the well-known ports (0–1023, reserved for major protocols like HTTP, SSH, and DNS) and the ephemeral/dynamic ports (49152–65535, assigned temporarily by the OS for outbound connections).

Registered ports can be claimed by any organization. IANA maintains the registry, but registration is voluntary and enforcement is informal. Many registered ports are used only by a narrow set of software. Port 2325 is a good example: unless you run Ansys simulation software, you'll likely never encounter it.

How to Check What's Listening on This Port

macOS / Linux:

sudo lsof -i :2325

or

sudo ss -tlnp | grep 2325

Windows:

netstat -ano | findstr :2325

Then match the PID to a process in Task Manager.

If nothing is listening on port 2325, that's normal. Most machines have no reason to use it.