Port 495: Intecourier — The Ghost in the Registry

Port 495 sits in the well-known ports range (0-1023), officially assigned by IANA to a service called "intecourier."¹ Both TCP and UDP protocols are registered. The contact listed is Steve Favor. That's where the trail goes cold.

What We Know

The IANA registry shows:

• Service name: intecourier
• Port: 495 (TCP and UDP)
• Contact: Steve Favor
• Documentation: None available

That's it. No RFC. No protocol specification. No company website. No discussion in networking forums. No mention in historical networking literature. Just a line in the registry.

What Range This Port Belongs To

Port 495 falls in the well-known ports range (0-1023). These ports are assigned by IANA and require administrative privileges to bind to on most systems. They're reserved for services that were considered important enough to warrant official registration.

The well-known range was meant for protocols that would become part of the Internet's infrastructure. Some did—HTTP on 80, HTTPS on 443, SSH on 22. Others, like intecourier, registered their claim and then disappeared.

What Intecourier Might Have Been

The name suggests a courier or messaging service. In the early days of networking, many companies built proprietary protocols for message delivery, file transfer, or inter-application communication. Most of these protocols died when standardized alternatives emerged.

Intecourier could have been:

• An internal corporate messaging system
• A file transfer protocol for a specific industry
• Part of a larger software suite that never took off
• A protocol that worked perfectly for its intended users and then became obsolete

We don't know. The service got its port number—official recognition from IANA—but didn't leave enough of a footprint for history to remember what it did.

Why This Matters

Port 495 is a reminder that the registry is not just a technical document. It's archaeology. Every port number represents someone who thought their protocol mattered enough to register it officially. Most of those people were right—for a time.

The well-known ports range is full of ghosts like this. Services that once ran on networks that no longer exist. Protocols that solved problems no one remembers having. Software that was deployed, used, and eventually replaced.

But the registry persists. Port 495 is still assigned to intecourier. If you bind to it today, you're using Steve Favor's port. You're standing in the space they claimed decades ago.

How to Check What's Listening

Even though intecourier has faded from memory, something might be using port 495 on your system:

# On Linux/Mac - check what's listening on port 495
sudo lsof -i :495
sudo netstat -tulpn | grep :495

# On Windows
netstat -ano | findstr :495

Most likely, you'll find nothing. Port 495 sits unused on most systems, waiting for a service that will never return.

The Registry Remembers

The Internet assigns ports the way cities assign addresses. Not every building survives, but the address remains. Port 495 is 123 Main Street where a business used to be. The sign is gone. The door is locked. But the address still appears on maps.

IANA doesn't remove port assignments when services disappear. The registry grows, but it rarely shrinks. Every registered port represents a moment when someone believed their protocol would matter.

For intecourier, that moment is preserved in the registry—and nowhere else.