Port 554 RTSP · TCP

What runs on port 554

RTSP: the control protocol for streaming video, used by nearly every IP camera, NVR and many media servers. The video itself goes over RTP, often on dynamic UDP ports, or interleaved in the RTSP TCP connection. Cameras with default credentials on 554 are a large share of the devices in IoT botnets.

Software that uses it: IP cameras (Hikvision, Dahua, Axis…) · VLC and ffmpeg (clients) · Frigate, ZoneMinder, Shinobi · MediaMTX · GStreamer

Should port 554 be open?

Private network or VPN only. Nothing good comes from this port being reachable from the internet. Keep it on an internal network, reach it over a VPN or an SSH tunnel, and firewall it from everything that does not need it.

• ffprobe rtsp://user:pass@camera:554/stream tells you what the camera offers.
• Never port-forward cameras; put them on a VLAN and view them through the NVR or a VPN.

Check port 554

# on the host: is anything listening, and which process?
ss -ltnp 'sport = :554'
sudo lsof -i :554

# from another machine: is it reachable?
nc -zv host 554
nmap -p 554 host
curl -v telnet://host:554      # raw TCP connect test, Ctrl-C to leave

A port that answers from the internet when it should not is the finding; nmap from a machine outside your network (or a VPS) is the honest test, because scans from inside the LAN pass the firewall you are trying to verify.

Allow or block port 554

# ufw (Ubuntu/Debian)
sudo ufw allow from 10.0.0.0/8 to any port 554 proto tcp
sudo ufw deny 554/tcp

# nftables
nft add rule inet filter input ip saddr 10.0.0.0/8 tcp dport 554 accept
nft add rule inet filter input tcp dport 554 drop

# iptables (legacy)
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 554 -s 10.0.0.0/8 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 554 -j DROP

# firewalld
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-rich-rule='rule family=ipv4 source address=10.0.0.0/8 port port=554 protocol=tcp accept'

Replace 10.0.0.0/8 with the networks that need access. Allowing by source address is the rule that matters; "allow 554" with no source is just "open".

Related ports

• 80 HTTP — Web, unencrypted
• 1935 RTMP — Live-stream ingest (OBS → server)
• 8554 RTSP alt — MediaMTX, cameras

Part of the port number reference. Ports are 16-bit numbers; see also the subnet calculator and the packet decoder, which shows ports inside TCP and UDP headers.

Questions