Well, I was curious what is said and now I am curious why I can't find it.  Here is a little on it that sounds right:
<http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=276194&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a> Andy
Sam Lewis wrote:

Andy,
Probably because it is becoming a more common sight and loopback interfaces are required for so many things now that they are always enabled.

Didn't mean to make you do any work.
Thanks,
Sam

Andy Willis wrote:

Interesting, I went to check exactly what it said but it no longer shows in the readme.  Used to say something about it being required but nothing about it now.
Andy
Sam Lewis wrote:

Ah, the good ol readme.  Glad somebody reads them :).

It seems odd that programs talk to themselves locally by way of network sockets.  But then again I'm not a programmer.  I saw this behavior while working on my daughter's Vista laptop and thought it was odd as well but I guess its a normal thing.
Andy thanks,
Sam

Andy Willis wrote:

Sam Lewis wrote:

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

I am not sure of the reason why... I just know that it is by design.  That is why the readme says to make sure that the loopback is enabled.
Andy

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