Port 718 sits in the well-known port range (0-1023) but has no official service assigned to it by IANA. It's quiet space in the registry—reserved but unused.
What Range This Port Belongs To
Port 718 falls within the well-known ports (also called system ports), which span 0-1023. These ports are managed by IANA and typically require administrative privileges to bind to on Unix-like systems.
Well-known ports are assigned through IETF Review or IESG Approval—formal processes that require documentation and community consensus. Port 718 has gone through neither, which means it's available but unclaimed.1
What We Know About Port 718
According to historical documentation, ports in the 600-1023 range were used by Mac OS X RPC-based services, including NetInfo—a distributed database system that managed administrative data in NeXTSTEP, OpenStep, and early Mac OS X Server.2
NetInfo stored information about user accounts, email configurations, network filesystems, and other system resources. It relied on RPC (Remote Procedure Call) services for network administration. While port 718 appears in this range, there's no specific documentation linking it to a particular NetInfo function.
NetInfo was deprecated in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (2007) and removed entirely in later versions, replaced by Open Directory and other modern directory services.
Why This Port Matters
Unassigned ports aren't useless—they're potential. They represent space in the port system that hasn't been claimed yet. They can be:
- Used locally by custom applications that need a fixed port number
- Claimed later if someone requests an official IANA assignment
- Repurposed by organizations for internal services
The fact that port 718 is unassigned means you can use it for your own purposes without conflicting with any standard protocol. But that also means you shouldn't expect anything to be listening here by default.
How to Check What's Listening
If you suspect something is using port 718 on your system, you can check:
On Linux/Mac:
On Windows:
If nothing returns, the port is unused. If something appears, you've found a local service—either a legitimate application or something worth investigating.
The Bigger Picture
The well-known range contains 1,024 ports. Not all of them are assigned. Many sit empty, reserved for services that were planned but never materialized, or deprecated protocols that left ghost entries behind.
Port 718 is one of these. It exists in the registry as unassigned space—neither claimed nor forbidden. It's a reminder that the Internet's infrastructure contains not just what's actively used, but also what's possible.
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