Character Generator Protocol

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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 for ready misuse.^[1]

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.