Port 2613: SMNTUBootstrap — Registered, Unknown, and Effectively Empty

Port 2613 sits in an unusual category: officially claimed, practically unknown.

IANA lists it as assigned to smntubootstrap on both TCP and UDP, registered by a contact at metrics.com. That's the complete public record. No RFC. No specification. No known implementation anyone has documented. The port has a name, and the name explains nothing.

The Registered Port Range

Port 2613 falls in the registered ports range (1024–49151). This range sits between the well-known ports (0–1023), which require root/admin privileges to bind and are home to foundational protocols like HTTP, SSH, and DNS, and the ephemeral ports (49152–65535), which operating systems assign dynamically for outgoing connections.

Registered ports don't require special system privileges to use. Any application can bind to them. IANA maintains a registry of registered ports to prevent conflicts — you submit a name and contact, and IANA records the assignment. There's no requirement to publish documentation, maintain the service, or ever ship a product.

The result is that the registered range contains a mix of thriving protocols, abandoned registrations, and names like "smntubootstrap" that entered the registry and left no other trace.

What's Actually on This Port

In practice, port 2613 is most likely to appear on your system as a dynamic ephemeral port — the source port on an outgoing connection, assigned by your OS and unrelated to any named service. If you're seeing it in network logs, that's almost certainly what it is.

It has no documented history as a vector for malware or exploits. Some port databases flag it based on pattern-matching rather than evidence. There's nothing here to suggest particular concern.

Checking What's Listening

If port 2613 shows up in your network activity and you want to know why:

On Linux or macOS:

# Show what process is listening on port 2613
sudo ss -tlnp | grep 2613
# or
sudo lsof -i :2613

On Windows:

# Show listening port and owning process
netstat -ano | findstr :2613
# Then look up the PID:
tasklist | findstr <PID>

If nothing is listening, the port appeared as a source port on outgoing traffic — completely normal. If something is actively listening, the process name will tell you what it is.

Why These Ghost Registrations Exist

IANA's registry is first-come, first-served. Companies and developers register ports for products that may never ship, get acquired, or simply stop maintaining their registration. The registry doesn't expire entries. Port 2613 may have been registered for an internal tool at a company that no longer exists, or for a product that never launched.

This is a feature of how the Internet was built: a global coordination layer that lets anyone register, but doesn't enforce what they do with it afterward. The alternative — requiring active maintenance of every registration — would be its own bureaucratic nightmare.

The registered range has thousands of ports like this. They're claimed in name, empty in practice, and available to anyone who needs them.