Hacker News Reader

For the record Gopher used port 150 for some time until we got a warning from Joyce that we had to change it.

Registering MIME types was also easy:

https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/application/msw...

Yes I remember that, and also http was on port 82 before it was assigned 80, if memory serves me right.

I reserved port 63 for whois++, that by the way rests fine where it is, in very few people's memories, during the same era. The motivation went something like 43 for whois protocol, 53 for ns, so 63 looks like evolution, though there were no aspirations to replace the name service protocol.

I take it this prompted the change to port 70. Why 70? What other protocol was using port 150 at the time?

SQL apparently.

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1060 first mention of port 150 being used

Was there, at one point, an "SQL protocol"? Because there isn't any standardized SQL wire-protocol today.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com