HowTo: Identify your IPv4/IPv6 Loopback Address

Most likely, administrators are familiar with IPv4 and IPv6 loop back address. The need to identify and reach IPv4/IPv6 loop back IP addresses remains basic but a need to know knowledge.

Here's a quick entry on how to identify IPv4/IPv6 loop back address status. Read on.

IPv4 Loop back Address

IPv4 loopback address typically refers to your network interface IPv4 loop back address. Here's how to identify and test your loopback address from linux terminal.

# ping localhost
# ping 127.0.0.1

The above ping commands gives you similar lines shown below

64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.026 ms
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.026 ms

More detailed explanations of ping results has been bloged here.

IPv6 Loop Back Address

The loopback address on an IPv6 network however is 0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1 which is basically abbreviated as ::1. If you want to test your network interface from your platform where IPv6 is enabled by default, you can type

# ping ::1

That is all, thanks.