This could be normal behavior. For example, if I make a post on my devel server that contains 3 smileys in it. I'll see the smile.gif being requested 3 times in a row on my first visit to the site and that post until the smile.gif is cached in the browser. Meaning, any loads after that won't request it.
If it's a search engine, then I'm not exactly sure if they do image caching, so it might request that image on every forum post load.
So, if you have a topic that has like 10 posts in it, and each one of those contains several smileys, or one post that contains a bunch of smileys, it very well could be normal behavior.
As for the problem of logging in, or reloading of the smile.gif. Can you clarify on those what the problems are?
