Added infos on Vista loopback connection handling.

This commit is contained in:
oliverschmidt 2008-11-17 22:38:05 +00:00
parent 98a42524d3
commit 4b268298cc

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@ -24,3 +24,22 @@ approach often described as IP-Aliasing was primarily choosen because it avoids
putting the network interface into promiscuous mode. The major benefit of this putting the network interface into promiscuous mode. The major benefit of this
is the compatibility with WLAN interfaces - which mostly come with Windows is the compatibility with WLAN interfaces - which mostly come with Windows
device drivers incapable of promiscuous mode. device drivers incapable of promiscuous mode.
The WinPcap library works fine with the 'Microsoft Loopback Adapter' so it's
easy to have a Contiki network application running on Windows communicate with
the local Windows instance for testing purposes - and monitor the communication
with Wireshark.
Windows Vista however tries to identify networks by the MAC address of the
default router. If that fails the network is defined as an 'Unidentified
Network' and thus classified as 'Public Network' resulting in very strict
firewall settings. As there's no default router for a loopback interface the
interface is always considered as a public network - which is kind of the
opposite of the actual situation ;-)
Instead of fiddling with the firewall settings for 'Public Networks' (or even
turning the firewall completely off) there's a clean solution which defines the
loopback interface as not a true network interface that connects to a network.
This results in generally deactivating both the network identification process
and the firewall for the loopback interface. The details are available at
http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1960546