Port 2635: Back Burner — A Name Without a Service

What This Port Is

Port 2635 sits in the registered port range (1024–49151), the middle tier of the port number system. Well-known ports (0–1023) are reserved for foundational services like HTTP, SSH, and DNS. Registered ports are claimed by applications through IANA to signal their intended use, though unlike well-known ports, operating systems don't restrict who can use them.

According to the IANA Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry, port 2635 is assigned to a service called "Back Burner" (service name: backburner) on both TCP and UDP.¹ The registrant is a private individual, not a major software vendor.

This is easily confused with Autodesk Backburner, a distributed render-farm management system used with 3ds Max, Maya, and other Autodesk products. But Autodesk Backburner uses ports 3234 and 3233 — not 2635.² The two share a name and a general domain (background processing), but they are unrelated registrations. The IANA entry for port 2635 leads nowhere that anyone in active use can point to.

What "Registered" Actually Means

Registration with IANA is not enforcement. Anyone can request a port assignment; IANA records the claim and contact information, but the service doesn't have to survive, succeed, or even ship. Port 2635 is a registration that outlasted whatever software it was meant to support.

This is common in the registered range. Thousands of entries represent services that were claimed, launched briefly, pivoted away, or simply abandoned. The port number itself is neither blocked nor special — it's available to any software that wants to use it.

Security Notes

Because port 2635 has no active, well-known service, unexpected traffic on this port warrants investigation. Port scanners and opportunistic malware probe all registered ports looking for misconfigured software or open listeners. An open port 2635 on your system is almost certainly something you installed, not the IANA-registered Back Burner service.

How to Check What's Listening

Linux / macOS:

# Show which process is listening on port 2635
ss -tlnp | grep 2635
# or
lsof -i :2635

Windows:

# Show process using port 2635
netstat -ano | findstr :2635
# Then look up the PID:
tasklist /FI "PID eq <PID>"

If something is listening, the process name will tell you what it is. If nothing is, the port is closed — which is the expected state on nearly every machine.

Related Ports

• Port 3234 — Autodesk Backburner Manager (the render farm software people are usually looking for)²
• Port 3233 — Autodesk Backburner Server component
• Port 3232 — Autodesk Backburner Queue