A weird thing about network connections in Icecat (and Firefox) on Guix

[Christopher Lemmer Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org>]

The same thing happens in Icecat as it does in nonguix's Firefox.  (I
mention the firefox thing to indicate that I *don't* think it's
icecat-specific code).  I've had this happen on my computer and have
found it weird/disturbing for a while, but recently I found it's also
happening on my spouse's computer, but only once she switched to Guix
also.  Wondering what's going on.  (Maybe this should be filed as a bug,
not sure.)

Here's roughly the scenario:

 - Have icecat/firefox open and browsing websites.
 - Oops, something happens to the network.  Maybe the wifi router goes
   out briefly or something.
 - You're back!  You can ssh into servers again and connect to irc, and
   even ungoogled-chromium seems fine to browse websites.
 - But weirdly... you have to restart icecat/firefox for things to work
   right again.

But weirdly... this isn't the case on my spouse's Debian install, etc.
And I also only started experiencing it when I started running Guix.
No particularly unusual extensions, just ublock origin, https
everywhere, tree style tabs.

I've turned off proxy settings in firefox to be sure.  No change
afaict.

It's so strange.  It's easy enough to fix but I'm disturbed that it's
happening at all.  It's as if there was some sneaky connection that
firefox was making and which got broken until I restarted the browser.
Or maybe it's just some massive caching bug that acts similarly.
Disturbing.

Anyone else experience the same?  I tried describing this and it sounded
like I was the only one having the issue a couple of years ago.  Now
that I'm not my only household member experiencing the same, I suspect
we are probably not alone...?

 - Chris