Port 184 sits in IANA's official registry with a name, a contact person, and absolutely no living documentation about what it actually did.
What Port 184 Is
Officially assigned to: OCServer
Protocol: Both TCP and UDP
Range: Well-known ports (0-1023)
Documented since: RFC 1700 (October 1994)
Contact: Jerrilynn Okamura
That's all we know. The assignment exists. The protocol doesn't—at least not anywhere the modern Internet can find it.
The Mystery of OCServer
Port 184 appears in IANA's registry as clearly as port 80 appears for HTTP. But while HTTP has billions of pages explaining what it does, OCServer has none. Zero documentation. No RFCs describing the protocol. No archived mailing list discussions. No README files in forgotten repositories.
The name suggests a client-server architecture—the "OC" prefix and "Server" suffix imply something was meant to connect to it. But what? For what purpose? In what context? The answers are gone.
Jerrilynn Okamura registered this port sometime before 1994. The registration survived the transition from RFC-based assigned numbers to IANA's living registry. But the protocol itself—whatever it was—didn't survive the transition to the modern web.
What This Port Represents
Port 184 is Internet archaeology. It's a reminder that the registry is a historical document, not just a technical one. Hundreds of ports in the well-known range were assigned in the 1980s and 1990s for protocols that nobody uses anymore. Some—like Telnet on 23 or Gopher on 70—we remember because they mattered. Others, like OCServer on 184, simply faded away.
The well-known port range (0-1023) requires IETF Review or IESG Approval for assignment. Someone went through that process for port 184. Someone wrote a proposal. Someone reviewed it. Someone approved it. And then the protocol disappeared, leaving only its registry entry behind.
What's Likely Listening on Port 184 Today
Almost certainly nothing. When you scan for open port 184 on most systems, you'll find it closed. The protocol it was assigned for is gone. Modern applications don't use it.
If you do find something listening on port 184, it's either:
- A very old system still running OCServer (unlikely)
- A modern application using the port unofficially because it happened to be available
- Malware that picked an obscure port number to avoid detection1
How to Check What's Using Port 184
On Linux or macOS:
On Windows:
If nothing returns, nothing is listening. That's the expected result.
Why Ghost Ports Matter
Port 184 and others like it are evidence of decisions made decades ago by people whose names remain in registries but whose work has vanished from living practice. The Internet Protocol suite won the protocol wars of the 1990s, but not every protocol that got a port assignment made it to the other side.
These ghost allocations remind us that the Internet we use today is built on top of an Internet that used to exist—one with different assumptions, different protocols, and different problems. The registry preserves their names. The rest is archaeology.
Related Ports
Many other ports in the well-known range are similarly obscure or obsolete:
- Port 175 - Reserved but never assigned
- Port 182 - Unassigned
- Port 185 - Remote-KIS (another vanished protocol)
Frequently Asked Questions
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