What Range This Port Belongs To
Port 1897 sits in the registered ports range (1024-49151), sometimes called user ports. This range is managed by IANA, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, which maintains the global registry of port assignments.1
Unlike the well-known ports below 1024, which require administrator privileges to open and carry protocols the whole Internet depends on, registered ports are different. Any application developer can apply to IANA for an assignment. IANA records the name and moves on. There is no technical enforcement, no interoperability requirement, no test that the software actually uses the port.
The result: thousands of entries in the registered range that are names on a list more than ports in active use.
The Official Assignment
IANA lists port 1897 as assigned to MetaAgent, supporting both TCP and UDP.2
MetaAgent is a CAM (Computer-Aided Manufacturing) tool made by Metalogi. It collects data streams from manufacturing equipment and translates between industrial protocols: MTConnect, OPC UA, NC-Link, MQTT, and others. Think of it as a universal translator for factory floor machines, routing their data into time-series databases like InfluxDB or Kafka.3
It is a real product doing real work in manufacturing environments.
What it does not do, as far as any public documentation reveals, is mention port 1897. The port appears in IANA's registry. It does not appear in Metalogi's documentation, configuration guides, or known network requirements.
This is not unusual. Port registrations are often filed as reservations. The software may use a different port in practice, may have changed its default, or may negotiate ports dynamically. The registration is a stake in the ground, not a promise of active traffic.
What You'll Actually See on Port 1897
Absent the MetaAgent use case, port 1897 has no documented unofficial uses and no notable malware associations. If you see traffic on this port, it is most likely:
- A custom application that chose this port arbitrarily
- Software configured to use a non-default port
- A misconfigured or ephemeral connection
How to Check What's Listening
If you see activity on port 1897 and want to know what's behind it:
On macOS or Linux:
or
On Windows:
Then match the PID to a process:
These commands show you which process owns the port. That's the ground truth. Registry listings tell you who filed a claim; these commands tell you who's actually home.
Why Unassigned-in-Practice Ports Matter
The registered ports range contains 48,127 possible ports. IANA has assigned a few thousand of them. Most are lightly documented, lightly used, or both.
This matters for a few reasons. Firewall rules that block "unassigned" ports catch nothing if the definition of "assigned" includes thousands of dormant registrations. Security tools that flag unusual port activity need to distinguish between "registered but unused" and "actively suspicious." And applications that pick ports arbitrarily from this range may inadvertently conflict with whatever MetaAgent (or any other registered service) is doing on a given network.
The registered range is large enough to absorb the chaos. But port 1897 is a good reminder that the registry describes intent, not reality.
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