Rails spinoffs - Apr 2006 - Ajax Requests and Server Ports

When I run a few PeriodicalUpdaters and look at a netstat dump on my server,
it shows 10 to 20 connections have been opened for one user (me). Are these
requests incapable of reusing open connections? I realize this is not a
proto/scripto question but I figured you guys have researched this kind of
thing before.

Thanks in advance
Daniel