Port 695: IEEE-MMS-SSL — The secure channel for robotic tape libraries

Port 695 is officially assigned to IEEE-MMS-SSL (IEEE Media Management System over SSL), a protocol designed to securely manage robotic tape libraries and removable media storage systems. Operating over TCP port 695, it wraps IEEE Media Management System commands in SSL/TLS encryption to protect communications between media management software and the robotic systems that physically handle tapes and disks.

What IEEE-MMS-SSL Does

IEEE-MMS-SSL is the encrypted variant of the IEEE Media Management System protocol, part of the IEEE 1244 standard suite developed in the late 1990s and approved in 2000.¹² The protocol manages removable media—primarily tape cartridges—in automated library systems where robotic arms retrieve, mount, and store physical media on shelves.

The protocol coordinates operations like:

• Library management — Which tapes are on which shelves, which slots are empty
• Drive management — Mounting and unmounting tapes in physical drives
• Media tracking — Metadata about what's stored on each tape
• Robotic control — Commands to retrieve tape X from shelf Y and load it into drive Z

IEEE-MMS-SSL adds SSL/TLS encryption to these commands, protecting sensitive information about what data exists, where it's stored, and when it's accessed.³

The IEEE 1244 Standard Suite

The IEEE Media Management System was a comprehensive framework consisting of multiple related standards:⁴⁵

• IEEE 1244.1-2000 — MMS Architecture (the overall system design)
• IEEE 1244.2-2000 — Session Security, Authentication, Initialization Protocol (SSAIP)
• IEEE 1244.3-2000 — Media Management Protocol (MMP)
• IEEE 1244.4-2000 — Drive Management Protocol (DMP)
• IEEE 1244.5-2000 — Library Management Protocol (LMP)

The standards specified a distributed, platform-independent system that could manage both tape and disk media using robotic and manual methods. The architecture was based on SGI's OpenVault product, which SGI released to the open source community.⁶

History and Current Status

The IEEE 1244 standards were approved in 2000 during an era when enterprise data backup and archival meant massive tape libraries—warehouse-sized systems with thousands of tape cartridges managed by robotic arms. Organizations like broadcasters, research institutions, and large enterprises relied on these systems to store petabytes of data on physical media.

All IEEE 1244 standards were administratively withdrawn in January 2007.⁶ The technology didn't disappear—tape libraries still exist and are still used for long-term archival storage—but the industry moved toward proprietary protocols and newer standards rather than the open IEEE framework.

Port 695 remains officially assigned to IEEE-MMS-SSL in the IANA registry, though the protocol itself is essentially obsolete.

Security Considerations

IEEE-MMS-SSL was designed to add security to media management operations. By encrypting the protocol with SSL/TLS, it protected:

• Command confidentiality — Preventing eavesdropping on what data is being accessed
• Authentication — Ensuring only authorized systems can command the robots
• Integrity — Preventing tampering with media management commands

However, since the standard was withdrawn in 2007, there's no ongoing maintenance or security updates. Any systems still running IEEE-MMS-SSL would be using outdated cryptographic practices.

If you find port 695 open on a modern system, it's worth investigating. It could indicate:

• Legacy tape library infrastructure still in use
• An unofficial service reusing the port number
• A misconfigured or forgotten service

You can check what's listening on port 695 with:

# On Linux/macOS
sudo lsof -i :695
sudo netstat -tulpn | grep :695

# On Windows
netstat -ano | findstr :695

The Era of Physical Data

Port 695 is a monument to a time when managing data meant managing physical objects. A time when "scaling storage" meant adding more shelves. When "data retrieval" meant waiting for a robot to fetch a tape. When "backup rotation" was literal—tapes physically rotating through storage locations.

The IEEE Media Management System represented an attempt to standardize how software communicated with these mechanical systems. The protocol spoke to robots, telling them where to go, what to pick up, and where to put it.

And for a brief moment in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it looked like this open standard might become the universal language of robotic data management.

Then the world moved on. Flash storage, cloud services, and disk-based backups made tape libraries increasingly niche. The IEEE 1244 standards were withdrawn. The robots kept working, but under proprietary protocols.

Port 695 remains—a door that once opened to commands for mechanical arms, now mostly quiet.

Related Ports

• Port 349 — Registered for MFTP (Multisource File Transfer Protocol), a different protocol
• Other IEEE 1244 protocols may have used different ports for their various management protocols, though these aren't well-documented in current registries