Port 1792: ibm-dt-2 — A Name Without an Explanation

Port 1792 sits in the registered port range (1024–49151), which means IANA has it on record. But the record doesn't tell you much.

What IANA Says

IANA assigned port 1792 (TCP and UDP) to a service called ibm-dt-2, with Sam Borman listed as the contact. No RFC. No public documentation. No IBM support page explaining what "dt-2" stands for or what the service actually does. The assignment exists; the explanation never followed.

This happens. Companies registered ports during the 1990s and early 2000s for internal services, R&D projects, or products that never shipped. The registration outlasted the context.

What Actually Ran Here

The most documented real-world use of port 1792 is NHL 2003, the EA Sports hockey game, which used UDP on this port for multiplayer sessions. That's not a joke — it's the clearest signal in the noise around this port number.

If you find port 1792 open on a modern system, it isn't NHL 2003. It's almost certainly an application that chose the port opportunistically, or a misconfigured service, or something worth investigating.

What Range This Port Belongs To

Port 1792 falls in the registered ports range: 1024–49151.

• Well-known ports (0–1023): Reserved for core Internet services. SSH, HTTP, DNS. Assigned by IANA, requiring root/admin to bind.
• Registered ports (1024–49151): Applications register here with IANA to avoid collisions. Registration doesn't require elevated privileges to bind, just a legitimate claim. This is where most software lives.
• Dynamic/ephemeral ports (49152–65535): Assigned temporarily by the OS for outgoing connections. No registration needed or expected.

Port 1792 was registered. It just wasn't explained.

How to Check What's Listening

If you see traffic on port 1792 and want to know what's using it:

On Linux/macOS:

# Show which process is listening on port 1792
ss -tlnp | grep 1792

# Or with lsof
lsof -i :1792

On Windows:

netstat -ano | findstr :1792

Then take the process ID from the output and look it up:

# Linux/macOS
ps aux | grep <PID>

# Windows (in Task Manager, or:)
tasklist | findstr <PID>

Why Unassigned (and Unexplained) Ports Matter

Most ports are quiet. They exist as numbers — possible addresses, never used. The registered port range has 48,000+ slots. Only a fraction are actively documented.

This matters for two reasons:

Security: An open port is a door. If you don't know what's behind it, you don't know if it should be open. Unassigned or poorly documented ports are exactly where unexpected services hide — sometimes malware, sometimes a forgotten internal tool, sometimes a developer who needed a port and picked one arbitrarily.

The allocation system: The registered port system works on good faith. IANA assigns; organizations are expected to use the assignment for its stated purpose. When registrations go undocumented, the directory becomes less useful. Port 1792 is a small example of a larger pattern: the port list reflects not just what was built, but what was intended, abandoned, or never explained.