Freebsd – Why can’t I ping an address on the loopback device under FreeBSD

freebsdipv4loopbacknetworking

From Wikipedia:

The most commonly used IP address on the loopback device is 127.0.0.1
for IPv4, although any address in the range 127.0.0.0 to
127.255.255.255 is mapped to it.

This is not true, at least on FreeBSD:

$ ping 127.1.1.1
PING 127.1.1.1 (127.1.1.1): 56 data bytes
ping: sendto: Can't assign requested address

Is this correct behaviour?

Best Answer

FreeBSD (also OS X, and I believe NetBSD & OpenBSD) will respond to requests sent to configured addresses on the loopback interface, just as they would for addresses on any other interface -- If you want an answer you need to assign the address first:

mgraziano@monitor ~]$ ifconfig lo0
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 16384
    options=3<RXCSUM,TXCSUM>
    inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x3 
    inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 
    inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000 
    nd6 options=3<PERFORMNUD,ACCEPT_RTADV>

[mgraziano@monitor ~]$ ping 127.1.1.1
PING 127.1.1.1 (127.1.1.1): 56 data bytes
ping: sendto: Can't assign requested address
^C

[mgraziano@monitor ~]$ sudo ifconfig lo0 alias 127.1.1.1 netmask 0xFFFFFFFF

[mgraziano@monitor ~]$ ifconfig lo0
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 16384
    options=3<RXCSUM,TXCSUM>
    inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x3 
    inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 
    inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000 
    inet 127.1.1.1 netmask 0xffffffff 
    nd6 options=3<PERFORMNUD,ACCEPT_RTADV>

[mgraziano@monitor ~]$ ping 127.1.1.1
PING 127.1.1.1 (127.1.1.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 127.1.1.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.020 ms
^C

On the logic behind this implementation, see RFC 3330:

127.0.0.0/8 - This block is assigned for use as the Internet host
loopback address. A datagram sent by a higher level protocol to an
address anywhere within this block should loop back inside the host.
This is ordinarily implemented using only 127.0.0.1/32 for loopback,
but no addresses within this block should ever appear on any network
anywhere [RFC1700, page 5].

(emphasis mine)
Linux and Windows are being "helpful" here, however from my chair answering a request that was sent to an address not assigned to this host is not correct behavior...

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