Public QOTD from imstillthinking.net

I decided, due to reasons that are still unclear to me, to host a QOTD server to keep this protocol alive. So if you have something that needs random quotes every time you connect to port 17, here you go.

Public QOTD Sever	TCP Port
um.imstillthinking.net	17

As of January 2026, the server will respond with a quote from an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. But stay tuned–I will probably update this to have a variety of different sources in the near future.

(Short) Blasts From The Past

Picture this: you roll out of bed, fire up your clunky terminal, and—surprise!—there’s a little nugget of wisdom (or silliness) waiting for you each day. That’s basically QOTD. It’s defined in RFC 865 (which is so short you can read it in one coffee break) and uses port 17 for both TCP and UDP.

The Protocol Nuts & Bolts

TCP Mode
- You connect to port 17.
- The server sends you a short quote—think ASCII text under 512 chars—and shuts the door immediately.
- Any data you send? Ignored. The server just shrugs and says, “Nope, not listening.”
UDP Mode
- You fling a UDP packet to port 17.
- The server sees your packet, tosses it in the trash, and sends back a little snippet of text.
- No “connection” to speak of—just a quick handshake of “Hey, quote me!” → “Sure, here’s a gem!”
Quote Format
- Strictly speaking, no fancy rules—just keep it to normal ASCII, newlines, maybe a carriage return, and definitely under 512 characters.
- Despite “Quote of the Day” in the name, it doesn’t have to be daily—could be random, weekly, or once every 47 minutes if you like.
Why Bother?
- Back in the day, it was a fun little test (like “Is my network alive?” or “Will I get a silly limerick or an inspirational line?”).
- Great for learning sockets and messing around with writing your first server code.

Where’d Everybody Go?

Yes, QOTD is basically a relic, overshadowed by modern stuff and often turned off on production systems. Why? Because:

Security Worries (Amplification Attacks):
- UDP-based QOTD is especially easy to “fake” traffic with. Attackers can spoof IP addresses, and your sweet little quote server ends up sending large-ish responses to someone who never asked for them.
- In short, QOTD can be abused to flood networks with unwanted traffic.
It’s “Useless” (Debatable!):
- Let’s face it: most folks don’t need random quotes coming from a raw socket these days—unless you’re feeling nostalgic or just messing around for fun.
- People can just go to a website or run a random fortune cookie script for their dose of daily wisdom.

Is It Truly Insecure?

UDP: Big yes—it’s trivially used in reflection/amplification DDoS attacks because UDP doesn’t validate the source IP.
TCP: Less obvious but still possible if an attacker can predict or guess sequence numbers. They can basically trick the server into sending quotes to a target who never requested them.
Real Reason for Extinction? A mixture of “meh, who needs it?” and “we don’t want an extra open port for random traffic.” So yeah, it’s a combination of both security and irrelevance.

Who’s Still Running It?

I am! And a handful of servers (like djxmmx.net) still serve daily quotes—purely for the retro fun.
NIST has a Daytime Protocol on port 13 that’s kinda in the same old-school spirit. But that’s actually useful and still used by many services to get updated time.
Any modern QOTD hobby server out there probably has rate limits or behind-the-scenes checks, so they’re not an easy spam weapon.

So what?

QOTD is part of an internet era when every tiny service had its own neat protocol—Echo, Discard, Daytime, QOTD, you name it. These days, it’s mostly a curiosity:

Insecure? It can be.
Useful? Rarely.
Nostalgic? Absolutely!

And that’s the short of it: QOTD is basically basic. And keeping it alive is some sort of techno-museum-style hobby. There’s a certain charm to firing up a QOTD server and remembering the simpler times when your terminal greeted you with a little inspiration first thing in the morning.

Public QOTD Servers

It is incredibly hard to find working QOTD servers today that aren’t running default Windows quotes. Most “working” servers are actually just default installations serving the same old quotes from decades ago. I’ve filtered out most insecure defaults but kept a few well-known ones.

Server	Notes	Example Response
djxmmx.net:17	TCP & UDP.	“Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called man! Oh the little that unhinges it, poor creatures that we are!” — Charles Dickens
um.imstillthinking.net:17	TCP only.	“Who Watches the Watchers - Stardate: 43173.5 - Captain’s log, Stardate 43173.5. We are en route to Mintaka Three…” — Star Trek: The Next Generation

If you find or know of any other working QOTD servers, that actually serve up QOTD’s, let me know here, and I’ll add it to the list.

Shout out to Gokberk Yaltirakli for the inspiration to make a list of working servers like this.

Windows QOTD Service

Many of the “working” QOTD servers you’ll find on the internet are actually just default Windows installations running the old Simple TCP/IP Services. This is a bundle of legacy diagnostic services that includes QOTD on TCP port 17.

Location: %SystemRoot%\System32\drivers\etc\quotes
Format: Quotes separated by lines containing just %

Many Windows machines ship with the same default set of quotes from decades ago. The quotes often include attribution in the format “Quote text” followed by author and birth/death years. Tools like Nmap even fingerprint Windows QOTD specifically as “Windows qotd” based on these quote patterns.

Windows QOTD has been available since at least Windows NT 3.5/3.51 as an optional TCP/IP component. It’s still present in Windows 10/11 as an optional feature (not installed by default), though it’s generally discouraged for security reasons.

Default Windows Quotes File

For reference, here are the exact contents of the default Windows quotes file (%SystemRoot%\System32\drivers\etc\quotes):

"My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters
get in the wrong places." A. A. Milne (1882-1958)
%
"Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long."
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
%
"In Heaven an angel is nobody in particular." George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
%
"Assassination is the extreme form of censorship."
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
%
"When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares
that it is his duty." George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
%
"We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to
consume wealth without producing it." George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
%
"We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!"
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
%
"The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether
you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation."
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
%
"Here's the rule for bargains: "Do other men, for they would do you."
That's the true business precept." Charles Dickens (1812-70)
%
"Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called man!
Oh the little that unhinges it, poor creatures that we are!"
Charles Dickens (1812-70)
%
"A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted
to be that profound secret and mystery to every other."
Charles Dickens (1812-70)
%
"It was as true as taxes is. And nothing's truer than them."
Charles Dickens (1812-70)
%

Now defunct QOTD servers

For completeness’ sake, I decided to host a list of once-but-no-longer-working QOTD servers, just in case one of them ever comes back online.

Defunct Server	Notes
wreeper.top
alpha.mike-r.com
cygnus-x.net
qotd.nngn.net
qotd.atheistwisdom.com
alpha.mike-r.com
qotd.online.net
qotd.sr.unh.edu
quote.polite.fi
dragon.bestmindsincorporated.com
quotes.theenglishman.com
quote.hackingdojo.com
quotes.cat-v.org
quotes.shoutirc.com
quotes.metalforge.net
quotes.mattv.net
quotes.gathman.org
quotes.cwilson.org
cygnus-x.net
qotd.nngn.net
qotd.atheistwisdom.com
athena.mit.edu
vax.ox.ac.uk
unix.stanford.edu
cmu.edu
ziaspace.com