Port 185: Remote-KIS — The Internet's First Universal Directory

Port 185 carries Remote-KIS (Remote-Knowbot Information Service), an early Internet protocol that solved a problem we've almost forgotten existed: finding people on the Internet when there was no universal directory.

In 1990, if you wanted to find someone's email address, you had to know which database they were in. InterNIC? MILNET? MCImail? The PSI White Pages Pilot Project? Each system was separate. Each required a different query. Remote-KIS changed that.

One query to port 185, and a "knowledge robot" would search them all.¹²

What Remote-KIS Does

Remote-KIS is the remote access protocol for the Knowbot Information Service (KIS)—an automated directory service that provided a unified WHOIS-like interface across multiple Internet user databases.³

How it worked:

• User connects to port 185 on a KIS server (like sol.bucknell.edu)
• User sends a single query—a name, email fragment, or identifier
• The Knowbot searches InterNIC, MILNET, MCImail, and other White Pages services simultaneously
• Results from all databases are returned in a unified format

It was the Internet's first meta-search for people. Google, but for finding email addresses. In 1990.⁴

The History

Remote-KIS was assigned port 185 by at least March 1990, documented in RFC 1060 with contact Ralph Droms of Bucknell University.⁵ Port 186 was assigned to the base KIS protocol, while port 185 handled remote queries.

The protocol emerged during the Internet's "scattered database" era—when user directories existed but were fragmented across incompatible systems. The Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI) developed the Knowbot system, and universities like Bucknell hosted KIS servers.⁶

The genuine strangeness: You could Telnet to port 185 at sol.bucknell.edu and talk to a robot that would go search the entire Internet for a person's contact information. Not a search engine scraping web pages—there were no web pages yet. A protocol specifically designed to federate directory queries across institutional databases.

The Internet was small enough that this seemed necessary. And it was small enough that it actually worked.

Why This Port Matters

Remote-KIS represents an architectural philosophy that lost: federated identity and directory services.

Instead of one company owning the phone book, KIS assumed multiple independent databases that could be queried together. Instead of centralized control, it assumed cooperation between institutions. Instead of surveillance capitalism, it assumed people wanted to be found.

The Web came along, and centralized search won. Google became the directory. Email addresses became less important than social media handles. The problem shifted from "I can't find anyone" to "everyone can find me."

But in 1990, port 185 was the Internet's answer to a fundamental question: How do we find each other?

Security Considerations

Remote-KIS was designed in an era before authentication, encryption, or privacy controls were standard. The protocol assumes:

• Queries and responses travel in plaintext
• Anyone can query for anyone
• No rate limiting or access control

By modern standards, it's a privacy nightmare—a protocol explicitly designed to make personal information searchable. In 1990, being findable was the goal.

Modern risk: Port 185 should not be exposed on modern networks. The protocol has no security features, and any service claiming to be KIS is either legacy infrastructure that should be retired or something pretending to be what it isn't.

Checking What's Listening

To see if anything is listening on port 185:

On Linux/Mac:

sudo lsof -i :185
# or
sudo netstat -tlnp | grep :185

On Windows:

netstat -ano | findstr :185

Testing remote connection:

telnet example.com 185
# or
nc -zv example.com 185

If something responds on port 185 in 2026, it's either a museum piece or a curiosity. The Knowbot era ended decades ago.

Related Ports

• Port 186: KIS Protocol (the base protocol, not remote access)
• Port 43: WHOIS (the decentralized directory service that survived)
• Port 389: LDAP (the enterprise directory protocol that replaced KIS in institutional settings)

The Unassigned Confusion

Some port databases list port 185 as "unassigned," but IANA has consistently assigned it to Remote-KIS since at least 1990.⁷ The confusion likely stems from the protocol's obsolescence—when something hasn't been used in 25 years, people forget it exists.

But the port is assigned. It's just that nobody uses it anymore.

The Lesson

Port 185 is a memorial to a different Internet—one where being findable was a feature, not a bug. Where institutions cooperated on directory services instead of hoarding user data. Where a single query could search the whole network because the whole network fit in a few databases.

The Internet got bigger. The philosophy changed. And port 185 went silent.

But the assignment remains, a fossil in the IANA registry, marking the spot where the Internet once tried to solve the problem of finding each other.