The CHARGEN (character generator) service is an Internet Protocol defined in Request for Comments 864. It is intended for testing and measurement purposes.

A host may connect to a server that supports the CHARGEN protocol, on either Transmission Control Protocol or User Datagram Protocol port 19. Upon opening a TCP connection, the server starts sending arbitrary characters to the connecting host and continues until the hosts closes the connection. In the UDP version of the protocol, the server sends an UDP packet containing a random number (between 0 and 512) of characters everytime it receives an UDP packet from the connecting host. Any data received by the server is thrown away.

Current testing and measurement of IP networks is more commonly done with Ping and Traceroute.

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