Hello again. Using Comodo Firewall Pro in XP Pro to check my web traffic I sometimes see 24 or more connections at a time (TCP Out : Listening) under Ashwebsv.exe. representing 96% (or more) of my web traffic. The connections span various Ports and IP addresses. The bytes In and Out are relatively low. Is this normal behavior? I apologize in advance for being so ignorant of these things. There is so much I just don’t know about computers/internet. 
Since the web shield monitors your http traffic for all requests for data by your browser (which is) there will be a corresponding web shield connection and often multiple connections at a web page could have multiple threads being downloaded.
When I first read this topic there were 20 web shield connections most localhost listening (not on-line), that is the purpose of the web shield to filter (listen for) inbound http traffic monitoring for infected files to block access to your system. This figure dropped to zero as all pages completed loading and bumped up as I loaded another page, etc. so it is quite normal.
Yes, Webshield in between the Internet and your browser (and other http programs).
Internet > WebShield > your browser
The connections that you’re seeing pass through WebShield.
Thank you both guys. I guess what was concerning me was that I had no web browsers open at the time.
No problem, a little strange if you didn’t have any browser open.
Comodo does show a lot of listening ports, but even then it would only be one localhost on port 12080.
My firewall is Outpost Pro 2009:
I haven’t seen this with firefox at the moment whilst typing this, I have 5 connections with firefox all localhost:loopback, which has just dropped to 4 as the web shield entry just closed so no corresponding web shield entries either. So if there is a period of inactivity like composing a post on the forum it doesn’t stay in my network activity view.
But as soon as I have any actual http traffic up pops the web shield entry. So for me it would appear that Comodo doesn’t drop the entries as quickly, I don’t know if it is reporting live data as I have never used comodo.
Which other products connect the Internet through port 80 with http protocol at that time?
I mean, which programs could have using the Internet at that time?
It could be that comodo isn’t dropping the browser connections as quickly as it should.
My CA Antispyware, SpywareDoctor and Google Updater may be using connections. I don’t know of any others that should be.