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A loopback address has been built into the IP domain system in order to allow for a device to send and receive its own data packets.
Loopback addresses can be useful in various kinds of analysis like testing and debugging, or in allowing routers to communicate in specific ways.
A simple way of describing how using a loopback address works is that a data packet will get sent through a network and routed back to the same device where it originated.
In IPv4, 127.0.0.1 is the most commonly used loopback address, however, this can range be extended to 127.255.255.255.
Techopedia Explains Loopback Address
The Loopback Interface
The loopback address is a vital component of what IT experts call a loopback interface. The loopback interface refers to the overall system by which network engineers can self-reference a device, or “ping” a device by sending its data packets back to itself.
A loopback interface helps to solve some router problems and implement some kinds of testing. For example, a paperclip test will utilize terminal emulator application methodology to verify some type of network connectivity. Other kinds of testing look at how routers are set up and how they talk to each other, and what can be done to evaluate the functionality of a specific part of a network.
The loopback address is also useful in Border Gateway Protocol scenarios that connect routers through inter-domain routing between autonomous systems. The autonomous system, as its own internal network, has its own protocols, to which a loopback address test can be a remedy for certain problems with network verification.
Different Loopback Addresses for IPv4 and IPv6 Domain Addressing Systems
The loopback address also looks different in IPv4 than it does in IPv6. In recent years, the Internet Protocol system has been retrenched to allow for a greater number of IP addresses. In the old IPv4 system, the loopback address was 127.0. 0.1. The syntax of the new loopback address in IPv6 is simpler: it's ::1.
Juniper Networks describes some of the corresponding change this way: “Most IP implementations support a loopback interface (lo0) to represent the loopback facility. Any traffic that a computer program sends on the loopback network is addressed to the same computer. The most commonly used IP address on the loopback network is 127.0.0.1 for IPv4 and ::1 for IPv6. The standard domain name for the address is localhost.”
Benefits of Using a Loopback Address
The benefits of using a loopback address to ping a given network device are useful in understanding how this kind of implementation works.
One of the biggest benefits of using the loopback address is that it is “always up” and available. Even in various sorts of system failures or network downtime, the loopback interface is still in place, allowing engineers to verify whether a given device connection is solvent or not.
Another key benefit is that the loopback address never changes depending on IP setups. It's a universal and constant part of the availability of systems to evaluate their connections.
Users can also implement stateless firewall filters in a loopback interface and loopback address use case.
With all of this in mind, the loopback address is a simple but critical part of the network engineer’s toolkit.
