Consul WAN Gossip
What is Port 8302?
Port 8302 is used by HashiCorp Consul for WAN gossip protocol communication between Consul servers in different datacenters. While port 8301 handles LAN gossip within a single datacenter, port 8302 enables cross-datacenter communication for service discovery, configuration replication, and prepared query forwarding. Only Consul servers participate in WAN gossip — client agents do not. This port enables Consul's multi-datacenter capabilities, allowing services to be discovered and queried across geographic boundaries. The WAN gossip pool is optimized for higher-latency links between data centers.
Common Uses
- Multi-datacenter Consul communication
- Cross-datacenter service discovery
- WAN federation between Consul clusters
- Global configuration replication
Technical Details
Copy-paste commands to check port 8302 (Consul WAN Gossip) from your terminal
Test connectivity
nc -zv example.com 8302
curl -v --max-time 5 http://example.com:8302/
telnet example.com 8302
nmap -p 8302 -sU -sV example.com
(echo > /dev/tcp/example.com/8302) 2>/dev/null && echo "open" || echo "closed"
Open port in firewall
sudo ufw allow 8302/tcp
sudo iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 8302 -j ACCEPT
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=8302/tcp && sudo firewall-cmd --reload
Security Considerations
WAN gossip must be encrypted as it traverses potentially untrusted networks. Enable TLS and gossip encryption. Restrict port 8302 to known Consul server IPs in other datacenters. Use firewall rules to prevent unauthorized cross-datacenter communication.
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