First thing first, ping 127.100.0.1 in Windows XP. Get these results...

At first my jaw dropped because I thought 127.100.0.1 was
pingable, but of course it's not. Then I realized that Windows bypasses what you
type and automatically puts in the loopback address of 127.0.0.1 instead. But at
the summary of the test, it puts the original IP address back in there. So it
looks like it's pinging 127.100.0.1, but in fact it's pinging 127.0.0.1.
Windows will do this to every IP in the 127.x.x.x address range except
for the network address, 127.0.0.0 and the broadcast address, 127.255.255.255,
those will fail.
I thought it was a closed case, but with this weird behavior of
Windows, I decided to look further, and I did the same test with other operating
systems. Here's the results...
So first I tested with Red Hat Linux version 9...

WTF?!?! How could that be? And why in Linux? Wah??? Still
perplexed, I tried other operating systems, starting with Windows 98...

WTF?!?! Windows 98 is screwy anyways, but why did this
ALSO go through? Hmmm...maybe it's something with VirtualPC, that's what I was
running for both Red Hat and Windows 98, so maybe that's it. So next I tried my
favorite server operating system, Windows Server 2003...

OK, that's more like it! Windows Server 2003 is doing the same
trick as Windows XP did, that I can understand. Now here is the results of
Windows Longhorn build 5048...

Doesn't say much, but it says that it won't work. How about I
try this in the new Windows Vista beta 1 copy?...

Um, OK, doesn't tell much, but it DOES tell that it's not going
to work. Looking good so far. My friend Jessie tries the same thing with an OS I
don't currently have installed, BSD...

Failed again. I like those results, that's what it's supposed
to do! Well, six tests done and it was successful on only 2 tests,
Windows 98 and Red Hat, but I'm thinking it's maybe a VirtualPC thing, I don't
have those installed alone on a PC at the moment. |