How do loopback addresses work

Log in. Options Help Chat with a consultant. Include archived documents. This content has been archived , and is no longer maintained by Indiana University. Information here may no longer be accurate, and links may no longer be available or reliable. Related documents. Reserved ranges for private IP addresses. We need to create loopback and then configure protocols like EIGRP, ospf, rip bgp etc and then we do ping x. I agree that the primary purpose for a loopback is to create an interface that is not tied to a physical link.

This is for redundancy in case one link goes down or needs to be maintained, you won't lose connection to the whole router from that segment if there is an alternate path. The loopback address is If you encounter a technical issue on the site, please open a support case. Communities: Chinese Japanese Korean. All Rights Reserved. The Cisco Learning Network. Enterprise Certifications Community. View This Post.

Edited February 16, at AM. What is loopback addresses,what is the purpose of using it and when can we use it? Hi Kiran We had this question many times before. Regards Conwyn. Hi Kiran, Vlan interfaces are generally used for management on switches and Loop-backs are often used for management on routers.

Hope this answer resolves your queries. Rehgards, Ranji.. If you have a switch with more than one layer3 interface, and you have set up routing in a way, that the switch is still reachable for management if any of the layer3 interfaces is down but not all , a loopback interface may still be reachable, so it may be a good idea to use that loopback interface instead of a VLAN interface for management even on switches Awesome Explanation.

Log In to Answer. In the old IPv4 system, the loopback address was The syntax of the new loopback address in IPv6 is simpler: it's 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 The standard domain name for the address is localhost. The benefits of using a loopback address to ping a given network device are useful in understanding how this kind of implementation works. 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.

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