Port 422 sits in the well-known port range (0-1023), officially assigned by IANA to a service called "ariel3" (Ariel 3). Both TCP and UDP protocols can use this port.12
That's where the story ends. Or rather, where it never begins.
What Is Ariel 3?
Nobody knows. There is no RFC documenting it. No protocol specification. No historical record of what it did, who created it, or why it needed a well-known port. The name appears in the IANA registry and promptly disappears from all other records.3
The assignment exists. The service does not.
The Well-Known Port Range
Port 422 falls in the well-known port range (0-1023), reserved for system processes and fundamental Internet services.4 These ports are assigned by IANA and require elevated privileges to bind to on most operating systems.
This makes the absence of information even more peculiar. Well-known ports are supposed to be for important, widely-used services. Port 22 is SSH. Port 80 is HTTP. Port 443 is HTTPS.
Port 422 is... Ariel 3. Whatever that was.
Why This Happens
The early Internet was smaller. Port assignments happened through informal processes. Someone needed a port for a project, registered it, and maybe the project never shipped. Or it shipped, was used by a handful of institutions, and faded into obscurity before anyone thought to document it properly.
Most protocols have RFCs—formal documents that explain how they work, why they exist, who designed them. Ariel 3 has none of this. It was assigned a number and then forgotten.
The port remains in the registry because IANA doesn't remove assignments lightly. Once a port is allocated, it stays allocated, even if the service that needed it has been dead for decades.
How to Check What's Listening on Port 422
Even though the official service is unknown, you can check if anything is actually using this port on your system:
On Linux/macOS:
On Windows:
If nothing returns, the port is available. If something is listening, you've found a rare unofficial use—or a very old system running a ghost protocol.
What This Port Teaches Us
Not every port has a story you can find. Some assignments are bureaucratic artifacts—numbers in a registry that outlived the services they represented. Port 422 is a reminder that the Internet wasn't built by a grand plan. It was built by people trying things, some of which worked and some of which didn't.
Ariel 3 didn't work, or it worked only briefly, or it worked somewhere nobody remembered to write about.
The port number is all that's left.
Related Ports
- Port 421 — Ariel 2 (another ghost assignment with no documentation)
- Port 419 — Ariel 1 (the first in the series, equally mysterious)
- Port 423 — IBM Operations Planning and Control Start (another obscure well-known port)
Frequently Asked Questions
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