WordPress tries to load “next page” after done loading current page

I have a fresh 3.5.1 installation – default theme, no plugins.

Running HTTPFox on Firefox shows that after a GET-request of any given page in WordPress has finished loading, a GET-request is sent for the rel="next" page:

<link rel="next" title="Next Page Title" href="http://www.domain.com/next-page/" />

and fails:

00:10:04.992    0.556   698 245 GET (Aborted)   text/html (NS_BINDING_ABORTED)  http://www.domain.com/next-page/

My question – is this on purpose? Is wordpress doing some kind of preloading? I’d like to understand why it is doing this.

This isn’t WordPress, it is Firefox’ Link prefetching. You can turn it off.

Serve those requests nothing:

# Serve Firefox' prefetch requests an empty page
RewriteCond %{HTTP_X_MOZ} ^prefetch$
RewriteRule ^ - [L,R=204]