Wireless Access

Hi
Why IP address 127.0.0.1 is kept for loopback ? why not any other IP address
Thanks in advance

To put things simply, your machine needs an address to call itself on networking basis.
This address must be available, that is to say not taken by any other machine (which mean that your machine must know that it's not another machine than itself).
From the beginning of the Internet, the Internic decided that some address ranges should be reserved for private network use, and that others would be forbidden. Most of the time, because their binary format would make them unsure.
The first of them is the 127.0.0.0 range (so from 127.0.0.0 to 127.0.0.255), because it's written 10000000.00000000.00000000.00000000
Such a long zero sequence is a big risk that the other machine reads it as a error in the signal.
What is a real risk on a real network is not risky on an internal use, such as the loopback.
So when programs came that an IP address shouls be used to call the machine itself, taking the first available address of the first forbidden (so not used in a real network) range suited the needs, and the habit emerged among programmers, which was fast validated as the 'way how to'.

Hope it answers your question

Jerome henry

Hai,

In computer identification,there is one address can not be used for it's identification called 127.0.0.1

It is used to check local machine's own network setup and it tells the computer not to test its connections to another computer.

127.0.0.1 is assigned for that job from the starting ip-address formation. Details are at http://www.ping127001.com/whyping.htm

Regards,
Muthukumar.

I do not agree with the argument posted by Jerome. As the binary equivalent of 127.0.0.1
is 01111111.00000000.00000000.00000001