269

Port 269 is registered with IANA under the service name manet, described simply as "MANET Protocols," and the registration is dual: 269/tcp and 269/udp carry identical entries in the IANA Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry, both pointing to RFC 5498 as the sole reference. RFC 5498 (I. Chakeres, T. Clausen, IETF MANET working group, published March 2009) is the document that actually reserves the number: it allocates well-known port 269 (both TCP and UDP) for Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) routers to exchange packets built in the generic RFC 5444 packet/message format, and separately reserves IP protocol number 138 for the same purpose. RFC 5444's format underlies a family of MANET routing protocols — NHDP (Neighborhood Discovery Protocol) and OLSRv2 (Optimized Link State Routing, version 2) being the primary ones — so a listener on 269 is functionally a mesh/ad-hoc routing peer rather than a client-server internet service. The assignee, contact, registration date, and modification date fields are all blank in IANA's registry, which is normal for RFC-defined assignments rather than a data gap. Because MANET routing traffic is exchanged peer-to-peer among co-located wireless/mesh routers rather than exposed to the public internet, no widely-documented scanning prevalence, default-shipping daemon, or malware association for this port could be substantiated in this pass; those aspects are recorded honestly as unknown rather than inferred.

IANA assignment

manet — "MANET Protocols"; reference [RFC 5498]; assignee/contact/registration date/modification date all blank in the registry; dual-registered 269/tcp + 269/udp with identical entries [Confirmed] — the IANA Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry-602; https://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-port-numbers/service-names-port-numbers.xhtml?page=6

Range class

well-known (0–1023) [Confirmed]

Prevalence / internet exposure

Unknown — no hits found in general internet port-scanning surveys or Shodan/Censys top-ports writeups searched in this pass; consistent with MANET being a local/wireless mesh routing protocol rather than a public-facing internet service, but this is an absence-of-evidence inference, not a sourced negative [Unknown]

Related ports

other IETF routing-protocol well-known ports in the same registry neighborhood; contrast with general-purpose service ports

Primary use

well-known TCP/UDP port for MANET routers to send/receive routing-protocol packets in the RFC 5444 packet/message format (e.g., NHDP, OLSRv2); RFC 5498 also reserves IP protocol number 138 for MANET

Common software

Unknown — no specific widely-deployed vendor/daemon defaulting to port 269 could be verified; the expected class is RFC5444-family MANET routing daemons (e.g., OLSRv2 implementations), but no citable source confirms a specific product [Unknown]

Security implications / malware associations

Unknown — no known trojan/malware association with port 269 found in standard trojan-port reference lists searched in this pass [Unknown]

Typically seen on

MANET/mesh-network routers and RFC5444-family routing daemons (NHDP/OLSRv2) operating on wireless ad-hoc networks

Defining RFC

RFC 5498, "IANA Registries for Mobile Ad Hoc Networking (MANET) Protocols," I. Chakeres & T. Clausen, IETF, published March 2009 [Confirmed] — https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5498/; https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5498

Port 269/udp is registered with IANA under the service name manet, described as "MANET Protocols," with [RFC5498] listed as its sole reference; the Assignee, Contact, Registration Date, and Modification Date columns are blank in the registry, which is a routine gap for many post-2000 protocol-suite allocations rather than a data error, so those fields are left blank here rather than guessed. The identical row appears one line above the registry for 269/tcp, confirming the port is deliberately dual-registered on both transports under the same name, description, and RFC reference — a pattern IANA uses when a protocol suite reserves matching TCP/UDP numbers without mandating both be implemented. RFC 5498 (Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) Neighborhood Discovery Protocol (NHDP) and Optimized Link State Routing Protocol version 2 (OLSRv2) Parameter Configuration, IETF MANET working group) formally allocates UDP port 269, alongside IP protocol number 138 and the multicast addresses 224.0.0.109 (IPv4) and FF02::6D (IPv6), as the well-known defaults MANET routing-protocol packets use to interoperate without prior configuration. Those packets are framed using the general MANET Packetization format defined separately in RFC 5444, and the actual routing protocols expected to sit on top of that framing — OLSRv2 (RFC 7181) and NHDP (RFC 6130) — were standardized in later, related RFCs. No source found in this research pass names concrete software implementations that bind to UDP/269 by default, nor any CVE, honeypot report, or scanning-telemetry discussion establishing real-world exposure; MANET protocols are inherently designed for local, ad-hoc mesh networks rather than public internet-facing services, which is consistent with the lack of scanning-related findings but is not itself proof of safety. Absent that evidence, both software attribution and exposure risk are recorded here as honestly Unknown rather than inferred from the port's registered purpose.

IANA assignment

manet — "MANET Protocols"; reference [RFC5498]; Assignee/Contact/Registration Date/Modification Date blank in registry [Confirmed] — the IANA Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry; https://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-port-numbers/service-names-port-numbers.xhtml?search=269

Range class

well-known (0–1023) [Confirmed]

Dual registration

269/tcp carries an identical row (same name, description, [RFC5498] reference) confirming deliberate dual tcp/udp registration [Confirmed] — the IANA Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry

Prevalence

Unknown — no nmap-services or scan-frequency data located in this research pass [Unknown]

Related ports

none confirmed from research; the port's paired non-port allocations are IP protocol 138 and multicast groups 224.0.0.109 (v4) / FF02::6D (v6) [Confirmed] — https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5498.html

Primary use

well-known UDP port for MANET (Mobile Ad hoc NETwork) routing-protocol packets; paired allocations are IP protocol number 138 and multicast addresses 224.0.0.109 (IPv4) / FF02::6D (IPv6); packets framed per the general MANET packet/message format

Common software / protocol family

no source directly names software bound to UDP/269 by default; the RFC 5444-framed protocols standardized to run over this allocation are OLSRv2 (RFC 7181) and NHDP (RFC 6130), but that is inferred protocol-family context, not confirmed implementation attribution

Security implications

no dedicated CVE, honeypot report, or scanning-telemetry source found tying this port to abuse or exploitation; MANET protocols are ad-hoc/mesh-local by design rather than typically internet-facing, but this is absence of evidence, not a confirmed safety finding [Unknown]

Typically seen on

mesh/ad-hoc network routers implementing MANET routing protocols (RFC 5498 family); not established by direct exposure data