Character Generator Protocol: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 05:02, 4 April 2014

Revision as of 01:48, 12 May 2014

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{{IPstack}}

The '''Character Generator Protocol''' ('''CHARGEN''') is a service of the [[Internet Protocol Suite]] defined in RFC 864 in 1983 by [[Jon Postel]]. It is intended for testing, debugging, and measurement purposes. The protocol is rarely used, as its design flaws allow ready misuse.

A host may connect to a server that supports the Character Generator Protocol on either [[Transmission Control Protocol]] (TCP) or [[User Datagram Protocol]] (UDP) [[port number]] 19. Upon opening a TCP connection, the server starts sending arbitrary characters to the connecting host and continues until the host closes the connection. In the UDP implementation of the protocol, the server sends a UDP datagram containing a random number (between 0 and 512) of characters every time it receives a datagram from the connecting host. Any data received by the server is discarded.