The Port Range
Port 1006 lives in the well-known ports range: 0–1023. These are the official, reserved numbers. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) controls this range. When you run something on one of these ports, you're using something that someone registered with the Internet standards body—or you're using something that sits empty.
Port 1006 is unassigned. No service has claimed it.
What That Means
The well-known ports were supposed to be finite and controlled. SSH got 22. HTTP got 80. HTTPS got 443. These are the numbered doors where everyone knows to knock. When IANA assigned them, they were trying to prevent chaos—one service per port, everyone knows where everything runs.
Port 1006 is a gap. It exists, it's available, but nothing official has ever needed it badly enough to register it.
The Port System Works Because of Gaps
This is worth noting: unassigned ports outnumber assigned ones. The well-known range only goes to 1023. There are ~900 of them. Maybe 300 have actual assignments. The rest are like 1006—available territory. Some are reserved for future use. Some were assigned decades ago to protocols nobody uses anymore. Some just sit there.
The gaps are not a failure of the system. They're a design feature. They leave room. They let new protocols register when they need to. They let the Internet expand without redrawing the entire map.
How to Check What's on Port 1006
If you want to know whether anything is actually listening on port 1006 on your machine (even though it's unassigned), use these commands:
On Linux/macOS:
On Windows (PowerShell):
In almost all cases, nothing will be there. Port 1006 will be silent.
Why Unassigned Ports Matter
The Internet runs on coordination. Some coordination happens through RFCs and IANA registrations. Some happens through gentlemen's agreements. Some happens because enough people do the same thing that it becomes a standard.
Unassigned ports like 1006 are the space between those agreements. They're where new things can test themselves. They're where developers can prototype services without conflict. They're reminders that the Internet is not fully occupied—there's still room.
Port 1006 has never carried urgent traffic. It has never carried a protocol that changed how we communicate. But it could. That potential, that empty channel, that gap in the numbering—that's what it carries.
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