I'm maintaining a Jabber server "Openfire 3.6.4". Since a user started running the messenger 'Empathy' I noticed many server to server connections being opened on my server. Those connections where closed after the user logged off and immediately opened when he logged on. So I tried it myself under Ubuntu 9.10 with the latest updates installed and got the same behavior.

Here you can see a screenshot from the admin panel of Openfire which shows open server connections:
http://666kb.com/i/bec5ym5gu7gyab012.gif

Normally just GMX, GMail and JabJab connections should be open, as I don't have that much users.

For further investigation I checked the source code of telepathy-gabble and found the additional proxy servers hard-coded in "connection.h":

/* List of public SOCKS5 proxies:
 * http://coccinella.im/servers/servers_by_proxy_bytestreams.html */
#define GABBLE_PARAMS_DEFAULT_SOCKS5_PROXIES \
    { "proxy.jabber.org", "proxy.jabberfr.org",\
      "proxy65.rooyee.biz", "proxy.jabbim.cz",\
      "proxy.911910.cn",\
      "proxy.downtempo.de",\
      "proxy.im.flosoft.biz",\
      "proxy.jabber.bluendo.com", "proxy.jabber.dk", "proxy.jabber.freenet.de",\
      "proxy.fsinf.at", "proxy.jabber.minus273.org",\
      "proxy.jabber.planetteamspeak.com", "proxy.jabber.tf-network.de",\
      "proxy.jabjab.de", "proxy.jabster.pl",\
      "proxy.schokokeks.org",\
      "proxy.ubuntu-jabber.de", "proxy.ubuntu-jabber.net",\
      "proxy65.unstable.nl", "proxy.verdammung.org", "proxy.vke.ru",\
      "proxy.vodka-pomme.net", "proxy.jabbernet.eu",\
      NULL }

/* These proxies appeared to be the same as proxy.jabbernet.eu
    "proxy.jabberchat.eu", "proxy.shady.nl", "proxy.nedbsd.be",\
    "proxy.nedbsd.eu", "proxy.nedbsd.nl", "proxy.4business.nl"\
*/

I can't say why those servers have to be hardcoded, but at least telepathy should not open unnecessary connections to those servers. I'd expect it to open those connections when needed.

Another user noticed this problem so far and reported it on the Openfire forums:
http://www.igniterealtime.org/community/thread/40410?tstart=0

I also filed a bug report at Ubuntu's launchpad, but was referred here:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/telepathy-gabble/+bug/487313