Ben Finney wrote: > "Gabriel Genellina" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > >> (And I would expect that making a connection to "localhost" actually >> does *not* go down up to the network card hardware layer, but I >> don't know for real if this is the case or not). > > It damned well better. That's the entire point of the loopback > interface: to get all the network layer code involved, but not to talk > on a physical network interface. > > If a programmer decides on behalf of the user that "localhost" should > be treated specially, that programmer is making an error. > Inter-process TCP/IP communication between two processes on the same host invariably uses the loopback interface (network 127.0.0.0). According to standards, all addresses in that network space refer to the local host, though 127.0.0.1 is conventionally used.
The transmit driver for the loopback interface receives a datagram from the local network layer and immediately announces its reception back to the local network layer. regards Steve -- Steve Holden +44 150 684 7255 +1 800 494 3119 Holden Web LLC/Ltd http://www.holdenweb.com Skype: holdenweb http://del.icio.us/steve.holden Blog of Note: http://holdenweb.blogspot.com See you at PyCon? http://us.pycon.org/TX2007 -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
