Port 3016: Notify Server — A Name Without a Story

What This Port Is

Port 3016 sits in the registered port range (1024–49151). These ports are assigned by IANA — the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority — to specific services through an application process. Anyone can request a registration; IANA records it and moves on. The registry is a list of claims, not a list of active, thriving protocols.

IANA lists port 3016 as "notify-srvr" on both TCP and UDP, registered to an individual named Hugo Parra.¹ There is no RFC, no public documentation, no open-source implementation, and no widely deployed software associated with this registration. The name exists. The protocol, as far as the public Internet is concerned, does not.

The Real Traffic: EverQuest 2

If you see traffic on port 3016 in the wild, it's more likely to be EverQuest 2's LaunchPad client than anything called notify-srvr. Sony Online Entertainment (later Daybreak Games) used the UDP range 3016–3021 for their LaunchPad patching and authentication client — the software that downloads game updates before you can log in.²

This is a common pattern: game companies pick ports in the registered range, don't formally register them with IANA, and use them for years. EverQuest 2 launched in 2004 and still runs. Millions of launcher connections have passed through this port without a second thought.

What "Registered" Actually Means

A registered port is a claim in a spreadsheet. IANA reviews applications and assigns port numbers, but it doesn't verify that the software exists, that the protocol is documented, or that anyone is actually using it. The registered port range has thousands of entries like this — obscure assignments from decades ago, abandoned projects, internal tools that never shipped.

This is different from the well-known ports (0–1023), where assignments like HTTP on 80 or HTTPS on 443 reflect genuine universal usage. In the registered range, the gap between "assigned" and "used" can be vast.

How to Check What's on This Port

If port 3016 is open on a machine you control, you can find out what's using it:

macOS / Linux:

# Show what process is listening on port 3016
sudo lsof -i :3016

# Or with ss (Linux)
sudo ss -tlnp | grep 3016

Windows:

netstat -ano | findstr :3016

The PID from netstat can be matched to a process name in Task Manager.

If something is listening and you don't recognize it, that's worth investigating — not because port 3016 is particularly dangerous, but because unknown listeners on any port are worth understanding.