# WHATPORT(554)

## NAME

port 554 — RTSP — RTSP — almost always an IP camera, NVR, or streaming appliance offering a video feed.

Protocol: TCP  
IANA registry

## DESCRIPTION

RTSP is the control protocol for streaming media: a client sends OPTIONS/DESCRIBE/SETUP/PLAY over TCP 554 and the actual audio and video flow over RTP, either on separate UDP ports or interleaved back over the same TCP connection. In practice every hit on 554 is an IP camera, a DVR/NVR, or a video encoder, since that is the ecosystem that standardized on it (ONVIF profiles included). Clients like VLC and ffmpeg speak it directly with an rtsp:// URL.

## EXPOSURE

**Do not expose.** RTSP authentication is Basic or Digest over an unencrypted channel and vendor firmware routinely ships default credentials, which is why internet-facing 554 is the single largest source of publicly viewable private cameras.

## CHECK

```sh
printf 'OPTIONS rtsp://TARGET:554/ RTSP/1.0\r\nCSeq: 1\r\n\r\n' | nc -w 3 TARGET 554
```

## SEE ALSO

- spec — [RFC 7826 — Real-Time Streaming Protocol Version 2.0](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7826) (datatracker.ietf.org)
- spec — [RFC 2326 — Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP 1.0, what devices actually implement)](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2326) (datatracker.ietf.org)
- iana — [IANA port registry — 554](https://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-port-numbers/service-names-port-numbers.xhtml?search=554) (iana.org)
- source — [FFmpeg — RTSP client/server implementation](https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg) (github.com)

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HTML: <https://whatport.net/554/> · JSON: <https://whatport.net/554.json> · full dataset: <https://whatport.net/ports.json>