Does loop back interface generates interrupt on NIC/Hardware

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23280168

Question

Does loop back interface generates interrupt on NIC/Hardware

Was it helpful?

Solution

The loopback interface is a virtual network interface. It doesn't correspond to any actual hardware, and packets transmitted through it therefore do not generate hardware interrupts.

It's possible that linux has some concept of a "soft interrupt", i.e. an inter-thread/process signalling mechanism, and that packets over the loopback will cause these. Older Linux versions definitely had these "soft interrupts", but I'm not sure if the 2.6 series does, and I'm not sure if packets over the loopback do or ever did generate them.

Licensed under: CC-BY-SA with attribution
Not affiliated with StackOverflow
scroll top