W3WP Process trying to contact an external server

We are facing a strange issue.

W3WP process is trying to contact an external server on Port 80(which is not used as in any configuration and code), there are no interfaces or relation between these two servers.

Netstat is showing that W3WP process is trying to connect using a high range port at source to port 80 on an external destination server, unable to narrow down what is causing this attempt to connect to an external server.

Below is the message shown in the netstat logs:

  TCP    X.X.X.X:61234    X.X.X.X:80       SYN_SENT        XXXX

Searched for the whole source code, configuration, web config files, ULS Logs, Event Viewer logs and could not find the IP address which is shown in the net stat logs.

Stopped SharePoint Admin service and timer service and still the server is trying to connect to the external server.

Would appreciate any help on giving some pointers in narrowing down which component is initiating the w3wp process to attempt a connection to an external server.