Port 2822: ka0wuc — A Registered Port with No Public Record

What Port 2822 Is

Port 2822 sits in the registered port range (1024–49151). These ports are administered by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which maintains a registry of who has claimed what. Unlike the well-known ports (0–1023) — where port 22 is SSH and port 443 is HTTPS and everyone agrees — registered ports are less strictly enforced. Claiming one means filing a request with IANA. It doesn't mean anyone is running that service.

The Registered Service

Port 2822 is registered to a service named ka0wuc for both TCP and UDP. The registrant is Kit Haskins, reachable at kit@ka0wuc.org.

KA0WUC is a ham radio callsign — the unique identifier assigned to Kit Haskins by the FCC for amateur radio operation out of Lamar, Colorado.¹

What the "ka0wuc" service actually does on port 2822 is not publicly documented anywhere. No RFC. No GitHub repository. No README. The IANA registry records the claim; it cannot record the purpose.

This happens. The registered port space has thousands of entries for personal projects, internal tools, and private applications that were never meant to be public services. IANA registered them anyway, because that's the system.

What You'll Find on Port 2822 in Practice

Nothing standardized. If you see traffic on port 2822, it's almost certainly one of three things:

• A private application configured to use this port arbitrarily
• A development server that picked a high-numbered port to avoid conflicts
• A scanner or probe checking for open ports (common across all registered ranges)

No major application officially uses 2822 as a default. No widely-deployed protocol lives here.

How to Check What's Listening

If port 2822 is open on a system you manage and you want to know why:

# Linux/macOS — show what process owns the port
sudo lsof -i :2822

# Linux — alternative with ss
sudo ss -tlnp | grep 2822

# Windows — show process ID
netstat -ano | findstr :2822

The process name and PID will tell you what opened the port. From there, check the application's documentation or configuration.

Why Unassigned and Obscure Ports Still Matter

Every port on your system that's open is a potential entry point. Port 2822 appearing unexpectedly on a server warrants the same question any open port does: did I put something there, or did something else?

The registered port range is large enough that no one has it fully memorized. That makes it useful for legitimate software that needs a home — and occasionally useful for software that would prefer not to be noticed.