What This Port Does
Port 3580 is registered to nati-svrloc — the National Instruments (NI) Service Locator — on both TCP and UDP. IANA accepted the registration in August 2002.
The NI Service Locator solves a specific problem: NI's software suite is modular. LabVIEW, the NI Example Finder, RT Proxy, and other tools need to talk to each other, but they communicate over dynamic TCP ports — ports that change each time the service starts. Without a fixed rendezvous point, none of them could find each other reliably.
Port 3580 is that rendezvous point. Each NI service registers itself with the locator on startup, announcing its current dynamic port. When another service needs to connect, it asks the locator: "What port is RT Proxy on right now?" The locator answers. The connection happens. This is service discovery at its simplest.1
The Range This Port Belongs To
Port 3580 sits in the registered port range (1024–49151). These ports are:
- Not reserved for the OS (those are 0–1023, the well-known ports)
- Not dynamically assigned for outgoing connections (those are 49152–65535, the ephemeral range)
- Formally registered with IANA, meaning an organization claimed them for a specific purpose
Registration doesn't mean enforcement. Any software can open port 3580 on your machine. The registry is a coordination mechanism, not a lock.
Who Uses This Port
If you have any National Instruments software installed — LabVIEW, LabWindows/CVI, NI-DAQmx, or the NI system suite — the NI Service Locator is likely running on your machine right now as a background process (nisvcloc.exe on Windows).
The locator runs silently. You won't notice it unless you look for it. It accepts both local and remote connections, though in practice it's almost entirely used for intra-machine communication.2
What's Listening on This Port
If you have NI software, check what the locator sees right now. Open a browser and navigate to:
This returns a live report of every service registered with the locator — their names, ports, and connection status. It's the closest thing to reading its mind.
To check from the command line:
macOS / Linux:
Windows:
If port 3580 is open and you don't have NI software, investigate. Something else claimed it.
Why Unassigned and Low-Traffic Ports Matter
Most of the registered port range is quiet. Tens of thousands of ports sit assigned to software that runs on a fraction of machines. Port 3580 is like this — you'll encounter it only in labs, engineering environments, and research institutions where NI hardware and LabVIEW are common.
But these ports matter for the same reason a directory matters even when most pages go unread: the system only works because everyone agrees on where to look. If NI hadn't registered 3580, some other software would have, and the conflicts would be someone's problem.
The IANA registry is a handshake, not a mandate. It says: "We're using this. Please don't."
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