Port 805: Unassigned — A gap in the well-known range

Port 805 sits in the well-known ports range but has no official assignment. It's one of the gaps—a port number that exists but carries no designated service.

What This Port Is

Range: Well-known ports (0-1023)

Port 805 falls within the well-known or system ports range, which is typically reserved for services fundamental to Internet operations. These ports are assigned by IANA through formal review processes.¹

But port 805 has no official assignment. The IANA registry lists it as unassigned—available for assignment but not currently claimed by any standard service.²

Why Unassigned Ports Matter

The well-known ports range contains 1,024 possible addresses (0-1023). Not all of them are assigned. Port 805 is one of these gaps.

Unassigned ports serve several purposes:

Future allocation — They're available for new services that might need a well-known port number. When a protocol becomes standardized and needs a permanent home, IANA can assign one of these unassigned ports.

Preventing conflicts — By formally tracking which ports are unassigned, IANA prevents different services from accidentally using the same port number. If you want to register a new service, you apply to IANA rather than just picking a random port.³

Room to grow — The Internet wasn't fully designed in 1981. Having unassigned ports means the system has room to evolve without having to renumber existing services.

Historical and Unofficial Uses

Some older documentation mentions port 805 in connection with Mac OS X RPC-based services, particularly NetInfo.⁴ However, this doesn't appear to be a formal IANA assignment—more likely an unofficial use that some systems adopted.

Unofficial uses happen all the time. Just because a port is unassigned doesn't mean nothing ever uses it. Software developers sometimes pick unused ports for their applications without going through the formal assignment process. This works fine for private networks but can cause problems if two different systems pick the same "unused" port.

Checking What's Listening

Even though port 805 has no official assignment, something on your system might still be using it. Here's how to check:

On Linux or macOS:

# See what's listening on port 805
sudo lsof -i :805

# Or using netstat
netstat -an | grep :805

On Windows:

# Check for port 805 usage
netstat -an | findstr :805

If nothing returns, the port is unused on your system. If something does show up, you've found a service using this unassigned port—possibly for local communication or development purposes.

The Bigger Picture

Port 805 is unassigned. That's not a problem—it's a feature. The port system works because IANA carefully manages which numbers mean what, leaving gaps for future needs.

When you see "unassigned" in the IANA registry, it doesn't mean forgotten or broken. It means available, reserved as possibility rather than claimed as certainty.

Most people will never interact with port 805. It sits there in the well-known range, a quiet address in a busy neighborhood, waiting for a service that might never arrive. And that's fine. Not every port needs to carry the weight of the Internet.