[strongSwan] strange behavior between hosts

[James]

All,

Hoping for some clarity to a behavior I've become aware of with strongSwan.

I have 5 hosts that connect to each other. The config stanzas on all
the hosts are practically identical (except for ids and IP addresses)
to each other and appear as follows:

conn dev4-dev3
  type=transport
  authby=secret
  left=2.1.1.174
  leftid=dev4
  leftfirewall=no
  leftupdown=/etc/ipsec.updown
  right=2.1.1.173
  rightid=dev3
  rightfirewall=no
  rightupdown=/etc/ipsec.updown
  auto=start
  compress = yes

conn dev4-dev5
  type=transport
  authby=secret
  left=2.1.1.174
  leftid=dev4
  leftfirewall=yes
  leftupdown=/etc/ipsec.updown
  right=2.1.1.175
  rightid=dev5
  rightfirewall=yes
  rightupdown=/etc/ipsec.updown
  auto=start
  compress = yes

<snip>

In total, dev4 _should have_ 4 connections: dev1, dev2, dev3 and dev5.

I've noticed, however, that after restarting the daemon there are
occasions where five or even six connections are being made. See
below:

http://pastebin.com/KPHeUR7J

Note how dev4 (the host where this output is from) has _multiple_
connections to 2.1.1.171 and 2.1.1.172.

How is this possible given the configuration above? Will one of these
eventually time out?

I suppose there are no real security issues with this, but I am rather
curious to determine why this is happening.

Any thoughts / ideas would be greatly appreciated.