In other industry literature, the term packet is sometimes used to mean the number of frames sent to a render node for processing. A “packet” size of 5, for example, means 5 frames are sent to each available render node. In Backburner, the term packet retains its traditional meaning under TCP/IP. The blocks of tasks automatically sent to render nodes for processing are similar to what other software manufacturers call packets.
Similarly, bucket rendering is a commonly used term for the concept of explicitly dividing a single image into slices (or tiles), for processing on different render nodes. The same concept applies in Backburner (for 3ds Max), but no particular term is used to describe the process. Backburner simply receives jobs from its render clients, and sends them to the render nodes for processing as blocks of tasks. Whether tasks represent entire frames, or portions of frames, is transparent to its operation.