What Port 3189 Is
Port 3189 belongs to the registered port range (1024–49151). These ports are not reserved by the operating system for privileged services the way well-known ports (0–1023) are, but they are tracked by IANA — the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority — so that organizations can reserve a port number for their software without colliding with others.
IANA's registry lists port 3189 as assigned to pcle-infex, described as the "Pinnacle Sys InfEx Port," registered for both TCP and UDP.1
Who Registered It
Pinnacle Systems was a video editing and capture hardware company best known for products like Pinnacle Studio and the PCTV capture cards. "pcle-infex" appears to combine PCIe (PCI Express, the bus standard used by capture cards) with "InfEx" — possibly short for "infrastructure exchange," a communication layer between Pinnacle hardware and software running on a PC.
The registration has left almost no public documentation. No RFC defines the protocol. No Wireshark dissector exists for it. No developer forums discuss it. Whatever InfEx was meant to do, it either never shipped on port 3189 or shipped so quietly that no trace remains.
Pinnacle Systems was acquired by Avid in 2005, and the consumer product line was later sold to Corel. The port registration has not been updated or reclaimed.
What You'll Find on This Port Today
Almost certainly nothing — unless software on your machine has chosen this port for an unrelated purpose. Applications sometimes bind to registered-but-dormant ports because the number is available and out of the way.
If something is listening on port 3189 on your machine and you didn't put it there, it's worth investigating.
How to Check What's Listening
macOS / Linux:
Linux (alternative):
Windows:
The output will show the process name and PID. Cross-reference the PID with Task Manager (Windows) or ps aux | grep <PID> (macOS/Linux) to identify the software.
Why Dormant Registrations Exist
The registered port range was designed to prevent conflicts, not guarantee activity. Organizations registered ports speculatively, for internal tools, or for products that never shipped widely. IANA does not reclaim registrations automatically, so the registry accumulates history.
Port 3189 is one of thousands of registered-but-quiet ports — a name in a list, a claim nobody is enforcing.
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