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

[Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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.