Port 1964: Solid E Engine — A name without a story

What Port 1964 Is

Port 1964 sits in the registered port range (1024–49151). These ports are managed by IANA, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, which maintains the official registry of port-to-service assignments. Anyone can apply to register a port; IANA records the request and publishes it.¹

Port 1964 is registered under the service name solid-e-engine, assigned for both TCP and UDP. That's the entirety of the public record. No RFC was ever written for it. No software documentation references it. No open-source project, no vendor page, no community forum thread explains what "solid-e-engine" was or who registered it.

It's a name in a table — and nothing more.

What the Registered Range Means

The registered port range was designed to give legitimate applications a stable, well-known address to operate from. Ports 1024–49151 are above the privileged range (0–1023), which requires root or administrator access to bind. Any user-level application can claim a registered port.

The system works when software is widely deployed and the registration reflects real usage. Port 1964 was registered at some point, but the software never achieved any visible adoption. The registration remains; the software, if it ever shipped, is gone.

Unofficial Uses

None are documented. Security databases flag no malware or trojans specifically associated with port 1964.² It doesn't appear in vulnerability disclosures or intrusion detection signatures. It's one of hundreds of registered ports that exist only on paper.

If You See Port 1964 on Your System

If something is listening on port 1964, it wasn't put there by a standard application — it's either:

• Custom software that chose this port arbitrarily
• Malware or a backdoor using an obscure port to avoid attention
• A development server or internal tool that needed any available port

Check it with standard tools:

Linux/macOS:

# Show what process is listening on port 1964
ss -tlnp sport = :1964

# Or with lsof
lsof -i :1964

Windows (PowerShell):

# Find the process ID listening on port 1964
Get-NetTCPConnection -LocalPort 1964

Then look up the process ID to identify the application. If you don't recognize it, treat it with suspicion.

Why Unassigned-in-Practice Ports Exist

The IANA registry has over 49,000 registered port slots. Many were claimed by software that was never widely deployed, by companies that no longer exist, or by projects that quietly died. IANA doesn't automatically reclaim these registrations.

The result: a registry full of ghost entries. Port 1964 is one of them — officially occupied, practically empty.