What path will TCP packet travel if it is sent to a socket on a “localhost” or local machine IP? Will the network adapter be involved? Or is only data copied from one address in memory to another?
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What path will TCP packet travel if it is sent to a socket on a “localhost” or local machine IP? Will the network adapter be involved? Or is only data copied from one address in memory to another?
The data is copied in memory only (actually, my guess is that is copied from userspace to kernelspace and then back to userspace on the receiving endpoint), Network adapter will not be involved. UNIXes usually contain a virtual ‘loopback’ network adapter that serves for this purpose; even when you access the local address on a physical adapter, you can often see it ‘travel’ on the loopback adapter.