# WHATPORT(6346)

## NAME

port 6346 — Gnutella — The Gnutella peer-to-peer network's default port, TCP and UDP 6346.

Protocol: TCP/UDP  
IANA registry

## DESCRIPTION

IANA registers 6346 as gnutella-svc for both TCP and UDP, and it is the default listening port for Gnutella servents — historically LimeWire, BearShare and Shareaza, still gtk-gnutella today. TCP carries peer connections and file transfers; UDP carries out-of-band query replies and host-cache pings in the modern protocol. Because peers must accept inbound connections to be useful, this port is deliberately opened or UPnP-forwarded, and it lit up firewall logs constantly during the file-sharing era. Finding it on a corporate network is normally a policy question about P2P clients rather than a compromise.

## EXPOSURE

**Expose with care.** Gnutella is designed to be internet-facing — an unreachable peer is a degraded peer — so exposing it can be deliberate. The exposure is what the client shares and the fact that an open 6346 advertises this host as a P2P node: audit the shared folders, and expose it only where that is fine.

## CHECK

```sh
sudo lsof -nP -iTCP:6346 -sTCP:LISTEN
```

## SEE ALSO

- source — [gtk-gnutella on GitHub](https://github.com/gtk-gnutella/gtk-gnutella) (github.com)
- iana — [IANA Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry — 6346 (gnutella-svc)](https://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-port-numbers/service-names-port-numbers.xhtml?search=6346) (iana.org)

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HTML: <https://whatport.net/6346/> · JSON: <https://whatport.net/6346.json> · full dataset: <https://whatport.net/ports.json>