Wireshark-users: Re: [Wireshark-users] Windows XP: tracing of packets on loopback-interface

From: Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2007 10:18:09 -0700
Stephen Fisher wrote:
On Sat, Aug 11, 2007 at 05:34:04PM +0200, Franz Edler wrote:

is there any possibility to trace packets on loopback-interface of my
WindowsXP machine.

See the "Windows" section at
http://wiki.wireshark.org/CaptureSetup/Loopback

...and note that Windows doesn't have something equivalent to the "loopback interface" in the UN*X sense - as far as I know, it handles traffic from the sending machine to itself by wrapping it around internally without it passing through a fake network interface, so there *is* no loopback adapter on which to trace.

The Microsoft Loopback Adapter looks like a regular network adapter, with a regular network interface, and traffic sent to a loopback address, or to another of the machine's network interfaces, doesn't go through it.