Port 1264 belongs to the registered ports range (1024-49151)—the middle tier of the port system where organizations can request official assignments from IANA for their protocols and services.
What Registered Ports Are
The port number system has three ranges:
- Well-known ports (0-1023): Reserved for essential Internet services like HTTP, SSH, DNS
- Registered ports (1024-49151): Assigned by IANA to specific protocols upon request
- Dynamic/private ports (49152-65535): Available for temporary or private use
Port 1264 is a registered port, which means someone requested it, IANA approved it, and it's officially assigned to a specific service: PRAT.
The PRAT Service
According to IANA's registry, port 1264 is assigned to a service called PRAT, registered by Keith Wood at Eurotherm's engineering division.1
Eurotherm is a company that manufactures industrial control systems—primarily for temperature control, process automation, and industrial manufacturing environments.2 They support various industrial networking protocols including Modbus, EtherNet/IP, and BACnet.
PRAT was likely a proprietary protocol developed for communication between Eurotherm controllers and other industrial automation equipment. However, there's virtually no public documentation about this protocol, no RFCs defining it, and no widespread evidence of its deployment.
This is common in the registered ports range. A company develops a protocol, reserves a port number to avoid conflicts, but the protocol either:
- Never gets widely deployed
- Gets used only within specific industrial installations
- Gets replaced by more common standards like Modbus or OPC
Port 1264 sits there, officially reserved, but largely unused in practice.
Why Unassigned and Obscure Ports Matter
The existence of ports like 1264 tells you something about how the Internet's address space was designed: with optimism.
IANA has registered thousands of ports for services that most people will never encounter. Some were for protocols that had a brief moment of relevance. Some were reserved "just in case" and never used. Some are still active in niche industrial or academic environments, invisible to the wider Internet.
This isn't waste—it's possibility space. When Eurotherm needed a port, there was one available. When the next protocol needs an address, there will be one waiting.
The registered ports range is like a city with 48,000 buildings, most of them empty, waiting for tenants who may or may not ever arrive.
What Might Be Listening on Port 1264
If you scan your network and find something on port 1264, it's likely one of these scenarios:
1. Actual PRAT/Eurotherm equipment — Rare, but possible in industrial control environments where Eurotherm hardware is deployed.
2. Malware or unauthorized service — Attackers sometimes use obscure registered ports assuming they won't be monitored.
3. Custom application — Developers sometimes pick random high-numbered ports without checking IANA assignments.
4. Nothing — The most common case. The port is closed, just like most ports on most machines.
How to Check What's Using Port 1264
On Linux or macOS:
On Windows:
These commands will show you if any process is listening on or connected to port 1264, along with the process ID so you can identify what it is.
The Honest Truth About This Port
Port 1264 is a ghost. It has an official assignment, a name in the registry, a contact person at a real company. But for most networks, most of the time, nothing is there.
And that's fine. Not every port needs to carry the Internet. Some ports exist just to make sure there's an address available when someone needs one—even if that day never comes.
Frequently Asked Questions About Port 1264
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