What Runs on This Port
Port 1469 is registered with IANA1 for aal-lm (Active Analysis Limited License Manager), a software license management system from the early days of commercial networking. Both TCP and UDP protocols can use this port.
The registration lists David Snocken as the contact, with a UK phone number (+44-71-437-7009) that uses the old London area code format—a detail that dates this registration to the early 1990s, before London's area codes were reorganized in 1995.
How License Managers Work
Every piece of commercial software that checks "do you have a license?" is asking a license manager somewhere. In enterprise environments, this typically happens over the network—your AutoCAD or MATLAB or SolidWorks installation sends a request to a license server that decides whether you're allowed to run the software.
The license manager listens on a port. Applications connect to that port and ask: "Can I run? Do I have permission?" The manager checks its database of licenses and responds yes or no. Without the manager responding, the software won't start.
Port 1469 was registered for this exact purpose—Active Analysis Limited's license manager would listen here, waiting for software to ask permission.
The Archaeology of Forgotten Software
Here's the strange thing: Active Analysis Limited has essentially vanished. The phone number is decades out of date. The company doesn't appear in modern business registries. There's no website, no product documentation, no evidence this license manager is still in use anywhere.
But the port remains registered. The IANA registry preserves it.1 Port 1469 still officially belongs to aal-lm, even though the software—and possibly the company—no longer exists.
This is the archaeology of the Internet. Port assignments are permanent. Once registered, they stay registered. The registry becomes a museum of protocols that went silent, companies that dissolved, software that nobody runs anymore.
What This Tells Us About Port Assignment
The registered port range (1024-49151) is full of ghosts like this. Companies registered ports for their products in the 1990s and early 2000s. Some of those products thrived. Most didn't. But the port numbers persist.
This is why IANA became more conservative about port assignments over time.2 Every registration is permanent. You can't reclaim a port just because the software died. The registry grows but never shrinks.
Port 1469 will belong to Active Analysis Limited's license manager forever, even if nobody has run that software in twenty years.
Security Considerations
Unassigned or rarely-used ports sometimes get repurposed by malware. Some security databases flag port 1469 as having been used by trojans in the past3—not because the original aal-lm software was malicious, but because abandoned ports make convenient hiding places.
If you see unexpected traffic on port 1469, it's worth investigating. The legitimate software is almost certainly not running anymore.
How to Check What's Using This Port
On Linux or macOS:
On Windows:
If nothing appears, nothing's listening. That's the expected result for most systems—this port belongs to software that time forgot.
Related Ports
Port 1470 was registered to the same company for "Universal Analytics" (uaiact)4—another service from Active Analysis Limited that has similarly vanished from the modern Internet.
License management today typically uses different ports. FLEXnet (the dominant license manager) uses ports 27000-27009 by default.5 Modern systems moved on. Port 1469 stayed behind.
Frequently Asked Questions About Port 1469
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