# WHATPORT(1984)

## NAME

port 1984 — Big Brother / Xymon — The Big Brother monitoring port, still in service as Xymon's server port.

Protocol: TCP  
IANA registry

## DESCRIPTION

IANA registers 1984 as bb, for the Big Brother monitoring system. Big Brother itself is long dead, but its successor Xymon kept the port: xymond listens on 0.0.0.0:1984 by default and accepts status reports from client machines as well as query and control commands. If you find it open, you are looking at a monitoring server, and its clients are pushing to it from across the network.

## EXPOSURE

**Do not expose.** The Xymon protocol has no authentication — anyone who can reach the port can inject false status, read the monitoring database, and issue control commands, so keep it inside the monitored network.

## CHECK

```sh
printf 'ping\n' | nc -w 3 TARGET 1984
```

## SEE ALSO

- docs — [xymond(8) manual page — default listen 0.0.0.0:1984](https://xymon.sourceforge.io/xymon/help/manpages/man8/xymond.8.html) (xymon.sourceforge.io)
- docs — [Xymon Monitor project site](https://xymon.sourceforge.io/) (xymon.sourceforge.io)
- iana — [IANA port registry — 1984 (bb)](https://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-port-numbers/service-names-port-numbers.xhtml?search=1984) (iana.org)

---

HTML: <https://whatport.net/1984/> · JSON: <https://whatport.net/1984.json> · full dataset: <https://whatport.net/ports.json>