I was looking at the netstat -s output for my laptop and found these ports talking to each other
 SOCK       TYPE              FOREIGN             LOCAL           FOREIGN         STATE
                   PORT             PORT                     HOST
======  =====      ==========      ==========      ==========    ========
This appears to be from Mozilla 1.7.7
24 STREAM           54811           54812       127.0.0.1  ESTABLISH
25 STREAM           54812           54811       127.0.0.1  ESTABLISH

This is from Firefox 2.x
1074 STREAM           55115           55116       127.0.0.1  ESTABLISH
1075 STREAM           55116           55115       127.0.0.1  ESTABLISH
1080 STREAM           55117           55118       127.0.0.1  ESTABLISH
1081 STREAM           55118           55117       127.0.0.1  ESTABLISH


Why are these applications establishing streams between themselves?
Thanks,
Sam