What you're seeing is a normal consequence of OS X's UNIX underpinnings. When you see configd accessing the network, that is how the Mac maintains things like lists of network file servers; configd helps maintain the icons you see in the Network window, among other things.

mDNSresponder is part of Bonjour, the part of OS X that maintains local no-configuration network connections. iChat, network printers, iTunes shared libraries, file servers, iPhoto libraries, and so on.

LaunchCFMapp is a part of the operating system responsible for loading and running programs that are based on Carbon. You will see network connection attempts from LaunchCFMapp when you run a Carbon program that requests network access, such as iTunes Helper.

In other words, all these network access attempts are normal, ordinary parts of OS X activity. If you use a firewall to block configd, you may have trouble accessing file servers on the network. If you block mDNSresponder, you may have trouble accessing shared iTunes libraries or remote iPhoto libraries on other servers. If you blick LaunchCFMapp, then programs like iTunes and the Microsoft Office automatic updater may not work correctly.


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