Port 10245 — Unassigned, But Occasionally Used

The Port Range: Registered, Not Reserved

Port 10245 falls in the registered ports range (1024–49151). This range is supposed to be assigned by IANA when someone submits a formal request for a service. But "supposed to" is the operative phrase. The registry is vast, and most ports in this range are simply never claimed.¹

Unlike the well-known ports (0–1023), which house the Internet's backbone services, registered ports are the middle ground. Some are famous: port 3306 is MySQL, port 5432 is PostgreSQL. Most are ghosts.

Port 10245 has no official assignment. No RFC defines it. No standard protocol runs on it. Search the IANA Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry directly, and port 10245 won't be there.²

Known Unofficial Uses

Though officially unassigned, port 10245 does carry traffic in specific contexts:

Kubernetes NGINX Ingress: The Kubernetes NGINX ingress controller uses port 10245 to expose a Go profiler for diagnostic purposes. If you're running Kubernetes with NGINX ingress, traffic on this port is the controller emitting its own metrics about itself—a machine talking to itself.³

Huawei Network Equipment: Huawei WLAN AC systems use port 10245 for Hot Standby Service (HSB). This is redundancy logic: when one network device fails, another takes over. Port 10245 is the heartbeat that keeps that failover system alive.⁴

Both uses are legitimate. Both are also invisible to anyone outside those specific ecosystems. Port 10245 isn't on your network unless you put it there, explicitly or by deploying specific infrastructure.

How to Check What's Listening

If you want to know whether port 10245 is actually in use on your machine:

On macOS or Linux:

lsof -i :10245
netstat -an | grep 10245
ss -an | grep 10245

On Windows:

netstat -ano | findstr :10245
Get-NetTCPConnection -LocalPort 10245 | Select-Object OwningProcess

If nothing shows up, port 10245 is silent on your system. That's normal. That's the most common state for any port in the registered range.

Why Unassigned Ports Matter

Port 10245 exemplifies something important: the Internet doesn't have a name for everything. Of the 49,151 possible registered ports, only a few thousand have official assignments. The rest are like unnamed alleys in a vast city. They exist. They're numbered. But most are dark.

This is actually a feature, not a bug. It means developers can deploy systems without fighting over port numbers. Kubernetes can use 10245. Huawei can use 10245. They don't collide because they operate in separate networks, or on the same network with intention and knowledge. The unassigned ports are safety valves—room to expand without central permission.

But it also means that port 10245, if you see it listening on a machine you don't recognize, could be almost anything. The port's silence is its honesty: it tells you nothing until you ask the system what's actually bound to it.

Conclusion

Port 10245 is a door that stays closed on most machines. When it opens, it's usually for a specific, technical reason. No story lives here—just machines talking to other machines in a language only they understand.