What Port 3602 Is
Port 3602 is officially registered with IANA under the service name infiniswitchcl — the InfiniSwitch Manager Client. It was registered in September 2002 by InfiniSwitch Corporation for communication between their InfiniBand switch management software and client applications.1
You will not encounter this port in normal network operations. The company behind it is gone.
The Story Behind It
In the early 2000s, InfiniBand was supposed to be the future of data center interconnects. A cluster of startups raced to build switching hardware for this new standard, each hoping to ride the wave into enterprise networking dominance.
InfiniSwitch Corporation was one of them. They built InfiniBand switching solutions for data centers — hardware designed to move data between servers at high speed with low latency. Their management software needed a port, so they registered 3602 with IANA in September 2002.2
The wave did not arrive as expected. InfiniBand found a niche in high-performance computing but never became the universal data center standard its backers imagined. InfiniSwitch merged with Lane 15 Software after venture capitalists demanded consolidation in exchange for continued funding. The combined company then merged with Infinicon. The products faded. The name faded. Port 3602 remains, a headstone in the IANA registry.3
What This Range Means
Port 3602 sits in the registered ports range (1024–49151). IANA assigns these ports to specific services upon request, but registration is not the same as relevance. A company can register a port, ship a product, and disappear — and the port remains technically "taken" in perpetuity.
There is no expiration date on a port registration. The registry is full of numbers claimed by products that shipped once, or never, or whose companies folded before the first customer installed the software.
Checking What Is Listening on This Port
If you see activity on port 3602, it is almost certainly not InfiniSwitch software. Check what is actually listening:
On Linux or macOS:
On Windows:
If something is listening, use the process ID to identify the application. Then decide whether it should be there.
Why Ghost Ports Exist
The IANA registry has over 49,000 registered port numbers and a finite supply of care. Ports get registered when products launch. They rarely get deregistered when products die.
This is not a flaw in the system — it is the system working as designed. Port numbers are meant to be stable identifiers. "Stable" means they do not change even when the companies behind them do.
The practical consequence: a substantial portion of the registered port range is occupied by products no longer in active use. Port 3602 is one of thousands in this condition. The number is not dangerous or unusual. It is simply a reminder that the Internet's infrastructure accumulates history without discarding it.
Frequently Asked Questions
क्या यह पृष्ठ सहायक था?