Port 814: Unassigned — A ghost in the well-known range

Port 814 sits in the well-known port range (0-1023), but IANA has never officially assigned it to any service. It's reserved space in the Internet's most valuable real estate—and it's empty.

What This Port Is

Port 814 is unassigned. There's no RFC defining what should run here. No official protocol claims this number. In the IANA registry, this port is simply blank.

But that doesn't mean it's never been used.

The Unofficial History: NetInfo

In the early 2000s, Mac OS X Server used ports in the 600-1023 range for RPC-based services.¹ Port 814 was among them, associated with NetInfo—Apple's hierarchical distributed database for managing user accounts, network resources, and system configuration.²

NetInfo was inherited from NeXTSTEP when Apple acquired NeXT in 1997. It was a clever system for its time: a distributed directory service that could replicate administrative data across multiple servers.

But NetInfo had problems. It was complex, proprietary, and didn't play well with standard LDAP-based directory services. By Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (released in 2007), Apple had completely replaced NetInfo with Open Directory.³

Port 814 went quiet.

What "Unassigned" Means

The well-known port range (0-1023) is controlled by IANA. Getting a port assigned here requires IETF review or IESG approval—it's the Internet's most carefully managed namespace.

Many well-known ports remain unassigned. They're held in reserve for future protocols that might need them. Or they're leftovers from an era when port assignments were more casual.

Port 814 is one of hundreds like this: officially unclaimed, occasionally used by someone's proprietary system, mostly silent.

Checking What's Listening

Even though port 814 has no official assignment, something could still be listening on it. Here's how to check:

On Linux or Mac:

sudo lsof -i :814
# or
sudo netstat -tulpn | grep :814

On Windows:

netstat -ano | findstr :814

If you see something listening on port 814, it's either legacy Mac OS X software or something using this port for a custom service.

Why Unassigned Ports Matter

Every unassigned port is potential space. It could become the next HTTPS (443) or SSH (22) if a protocol emerges that needs it.

But most unassigned well-known ports will probably stay empty. The Internet has moved on. New protocols tend to use the registered range (1024-49151) or negotiate dynamic ports (49152-65535). The well-known range is mostly frozen—a historical record of the Internet's first few decades.

Port 814 is part of that record. It once carried Apple's directory data across corporate networks. Now it's silent, waiting for a protocol that may never arrive.

Related Ports

• Port 111 — Portmapper/RPCbind (manages RPC service port assignments)
• Port 389 — LDAP (what most directory services use now)
• Ports 600-1023 — Many used by Mac OS X RPC services historically¹