Why so many ip connections while browsing?

[redit]

Hello, I've recently installed conky and it outputs connections in real time. As I type this it is showing 52 connections. It is often above 7 connections unless the browser sits idle for a few minutes. Is this normal? How can I reduce the number of connections? I'm running Ubuntu w/ firefox and have most of the common privacy features enabled.

 

[eibgrad]

There are so many connections because there are so many resources that need to be gathered from many different domains in order to assemble the webpage. The ads alone can account for many of these, although even more legitimate resources are often needed as well (images, newsfeeds, database resources, etc.). It all adds up.

One way to minimize it is to use something like NoScript so that at least the ads are not retrieved.