Port 10014 — The Unassigned Industrial Port

What This Port Is

Port 10014 has no official service registered with IANA.¹ It sits in the registered port range (1024-49151), which means it can be claimed by anyone who asks, but no one has formally registered it at the Internet authority level.

In practice, it's used by AspenTech's SQLplus database system, primarily for ODBC connections in manufacturing execution systems (MES) and industrial applications like IP.21 historian software.² When factory automation systems need to talk to AspenTech databases, this is often the port they use.

What This Means

The registered port range (1024-49151) is vast—48,000+ ports—and only a fraction are officially claimed. Ports like 10014 exist in a gray zone: they have real-world uses, sometimes across thousands of installations, but they're not formally documented in the port registry.

This happens because:

• Legacy software often chooses its own ports without asking IANA for permission
• Proprietary systems operate in private networks where official registration feels unnecessary
• Industrial equipment was sometimes built before modern port registration procedures existed

Port 10014 is probably in use right now in factories, refineries, and chemical plants. Those systems work fine without official recognition. The IANA registry is more of a coordination mechanism for public protocols than a police force.

Checking If It's Running

To see if anything is listening on port 10014:

On macOS/Linux:

lsof -i :10014
netstat -an | grep 10014

On Windows:

netstat -ano | findstr :10014

Remotely (from another machine):

nc -zv hostname 10014

If you see a connection, it's most likely an AspenTech application. If you see nothing and port 10014 is open in your firewall, something on your network might be secretly listening.

Why Unassigned Ports Matter

The 48,000-port gap between well-known and ephemeral ports is where the Internet's real work happens. Official protocols get the spotlight (port 80 for HTTP, port 443 for HTTPS), but thousands of unassigned ports carry mission-critical traffic in hospitals, factories, banks, and research labs.

Port 10014 is a reminder: the Internet's nervous system isn't just the famous parts. It's also the quiet industrial channels, the proprietary systems, the private conversations that never make it into RFCs.