Port 3336: directv-tick — A Ghost Registration

What Port 3336 Is

Port 3336 sits in the registered ports range (1024–49151) and carries an official IANA registration: directv-tick, for a service called Direct TV Tickers.¹

Both TCP and UDP are registered. Neither sees meaningful traffic today.

The Registration

The directv-tick service was registered by DirecTV for transmitting ticker-style data — scrolling feeds of stock prices, sports scores, or news headlines — to receivers over IP connections.² This was a real category of service in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when satellite TV providers were building out interactive and data services alongside their video feeds.

The registration persists in the IANA registry because port assignments are rarely removed. They accumulate. Companies change, services die, and the port numbers remain as fossils.

What This Port Range Means

Registered ports (1024–49151) occupy the middle ground of the port number space:

• Well-known ports (0–1023) are reserved for foundational Internet services: HTTP at 80, HTTPS at 443, SSH at 22
• Registered ports (1024–49151) are claimed by specific applications and services through IANA; anyone can request one
• Dynamic/ephemeral ports (49152–65535) are used temporarily by operating systems for outbound connections

A registered port means IANA has a record of the assignment. It does not mean the service is active, maintained, or even relevant.

What's Actually on Port 3336 Today

Almost certainly nothing official. If you see traffic on this port, it's more likely:

• Software using it as an alternate port (MySQL operators sometimes relocate from default 3306 to nearby ports)
• A custom application that chose this port arbitrarily
• A misconfigured service
• Rarely, a scanner probing the port as part of automated reconnaissance

How to Check What's Listening

# macOS / Linux
sudo lsof -i :3336

# Linux (alternative)
sudo ss -tlnp | grep 3336

# Windows
netstat -aon | findstr :3336

If nothing responds, the port is closed. If something does, check the process name — it will tell you what's actually using it.

Why Ghost Registrations Matter

The port registry is a historical artifact as much as a technical document. Services come and go; registrations stay. Port 3336 is a small example of how the Internet accumulates institutional memory: a satellite TV company once cared enough about ticker data delivery to claim a port number, and that claim still stands decades later, long after anyone is sending stock quotes through it.

The port isn't dangerous. It isn't interesting to attackers. It's just a number that once meant something, preserved in the registry the way a city preserves old street names after the streets themselves have changed.