Port 1206: Anthony Data — A registered ghost

Port 1206 sits in the IANA registry with the service name "anthony-data." That's essentially all we know.

The Registered Ports Range

Port 1206 belongs to the registered ports range (1024-49151). This range is managed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which assigns port numbers to specific services upon request.¹

Unlike well-known ports (0-1023) that require strict IETF review, registered ports can be claimed by developers, companies, or organizations for their protocols and applications. You submit a form, demonstrate you're using the port for something, and IANA adds it to the registry.

What Is Anthony Data?

Officially: a service registered to use port 1206 for both TCP and UDP.²

Practically: unknown. There's no RFC defining the protocol. No documentation explaining what it does. No evidence of active use on production networks. The service exists in the registry and nowhere else.

This happens more often than you'd think. The IANA registry contains thousands of ports like this - officially assigned, practically forgotten. Someone filed the paperwork in the 1990s or early 2000s, got the port number, and the project either never launched, quietly died, or remained internal to a single organization.

Why Port 1206 Matters (Even If Nothing Uses It)

The existence of ports like 1206 tells us something important about how the Internet's numbering system works:

Registration doesn't mean adoption. Getting a port number is easy. Building a protocol that people actually use is hard. The gap between those two things is where ports like 1206 live.

The registry is permanent. Once assigned, port numbers rarely get reclaimed. Even if anthony-data disappeared decades ago, port 1206 remains reserved for it. This is by design - reusing port numbers would create conflicts if old software suddenly reappeared.

Obscurity provides no security. Just because a port isn't documented doesn't mean it's safe to use for something else. If you run a service on port 1206, scanners will see it. Security researchers will probe it. Firewalls will log it. The lack of documentation just makes it harder to understand what should be happening.

Checking What's Listening on Port 1206

Even though anthony-data is obscure, something on your system might still be using port 1206. Here's how to check:

On Linux/Mac:

# Check what's listening on port 1206
sudo lsof -i :1206

# Or using netstat
netstat -an | grep 1206

On Windows:

# Check port 1206 status
netstat -ano | findstr :1206

If you find something listening on this port and you don't recognize it, investigate. It's probably not anthony-data (unless you've discovered lost software from the 1990s), which means it's either:

• A legitimate application that chose this port
• Malware that picked a quiet corner of the port range
• A misconfigured service

The Registry as Archaeological Record

Ports like 1206 are fossils. They mark moments when someone had a plan, filed paperwork, claimed a number. Whether that plan succeeded or failed, the port number remains - a permanent record of intention.

The IANA registry isn't just a technical database. It's a record of every protocol someone thought was important enough to formalize. Most of these protocols worked. Many are still in use today. Some, like anthony-data, left nothing behind but a name and a number.

Port 1206 might never carry meaningful traffic again. But it's reserved, documented, and waiting - just in case.