Port 226 is reserved. It belongs to the well-known ports range (0-1023), but it has no service assigned to it. It's not available for use. It just exists, held in place by IANA for reasons that have become obscure over time.
What "Reserved" Means
In the IANA port registry, ports can have three states:
- Assigned — actively used by a specific service
- Unassigned — available for assignment upon request
- Reserved — not available for regular assignment; held by IANA for special purposes
Port 226 falls into the third category. It's part of a reserved block spanning ports 225-241—seventeen consecutive ports that have been marked "Reserved" for over thirty years.1
The History of Ports 225-241
In RFC 1010 (May 1987), ports 224-241 were listed as "Unassigned."2 By RFC 1700 (October 1994), this range was marked "Reserved" with Jon Postel listed as the contact.3 Somewhere between those seven years, someone decided these ports should be held back.
The exact reason isn't documented. Reserved ports are typically set aside to:
- Keep them available for potential future use
- Manage the port number space efficiently
- Allow for extensions of port ranges
But why specifically ports 225-241? That knowledge seems to have been lost. They've just been waiting there, untouched, since the early days of the Internet.
What This Port Carries
Nothing. Port 226 carries no traffic by design. If you see activity on port 226, it's either:
- A misconfigured application
- Local development or testing
- Something that shouldn't be there
Checking Port 226
To see if anything is listening on port 226 on your system:
Linux/Mac:
Windows:
If something is using port 226, it's not following any official standard—it's just using an empty room in the well-known range.
Why Unassigned Ports Matter
The Internet has 65,535 ports per protocol (TCP and UDP). Not all of them need to be filled. Reserved ports like 226 are part of the infrastructure—the breathing room in the system. They're placeholders for possibilities.
Ports 225-241 have been reserved since before most of the modern Internet existed. They watched HTTP grow up. They were already waiting when the first web browser launched. They're still there, seventeen quiet doors that nobody opens.
Maybe they'll be assigned someday. Maybe they won't. For now, port 226 is just a number in the registry—reserved, unassigned, patiently waiting for a purpose that may never arrive.
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