Loopback interface on win11

Hi all, Probably not possible but here's what I want to do -

I have a laptop connected to wired network, it running various services, smtp/imap, plex, ssh, sftp etc to achieve this I have nats on my router pointing at the laptop wired IP

When I pickup my laptop to go use it in the lounge it connects to wifi, gets a different IP and the nats no longer hit and services all stop.

The loopback (as it is on a router) is a logical interface that will bind to any available physical interface, so it would work like so:
wired: 192.168.1.50
wireless: 192.168.1.60
loopback: 192.168.1.70
all incoming nats would point at .70 which would be available regardless whether its on wired or wireless and win would send traffic out with a source ip of .70 out whichever interface was active.

Anyone seen a way to do this? I have added the legacy loopback driver but after assigning an IP to it its not pingable on the network only the local host.

Hi @flamer , welcome to the Forum.

A Loopback Interface is a virtual interface that can be used for diagnostics and troubleshooting services running on the local machine. It does not sound like you are trying to acheive that.

What you are trying to acheive sounds more like Port Forwarding or Remote Port Forwarding. Port Forwarding or Remote Port Forwarding redirects traffic from one address and port number to another . They are primarily used to allow Private Networks access Public Networks. You can use your Router or Laptop FIrewall to do Port Forwarding. Port Forwarding is said to be similar to SSH Tunnelling, but I do not know enough about SSH.

Also, does Windows know you are using a static address for wired/wireless LANs? You may have to tell your Network devices on Windows what the static addresses are, by using the Network and Sharing Centre, if you not done so already.

I don't know your network layout, but if you only have one PC and one wireless hub, the obvious answer is not NAT'ing the WiFi but running in bridge mode. Then both the wired and wireless devices live on the same logical network. The reason most WiFi's default to NAT mode is to isolate traffic for security and performance reasons.

NAT'ing would still happen on the outside router/modem for external access.

garlin said:

I don't know your network layout, but if you only have one PC and one wireless hub, the obvious answer is not NAT'ing the WiFi but running in bridge mode. Then both the wired and wireless devices live on the same logical network. The reason most WiFi's default to NAT mode is to isolate traffic for security and performance reasons.

NAT'ing would still happen on the outside router/modem for external access.

Click to expand...

Thanks, bridging was not a bad idea I tried that and it somewhat worked, but broke when the cable was unplugged.

I just discovered a solution thats working really well, by teaming the ethernet and wifi nic together, I can then add the IP to the new logical team adaptor, that adaptor (along with its IP address) stays active even after pulling the cable or disabling wifi.

steps to create that:
run Powershell as admin
New-NetSwitchTeam -Name "Net-Team" -TeamMembers "Ethernet","Wi-Fi"

My input is follows but is not complete:

1) 192.168.1.50 would obviously be set as a static IP on the notebooks ethernet interface
2) 192.168.1.60 would obviously be set as a static IP on the notebooks WiFi interface

For the above, is the gateway/default route the same IP or will it be different?

3) 192.168.1.70 is a IP on the router if I am correct.
4) For all incoming connections meaning all ports going to 192.168.1.70, that would be something called DMZ (Demilitarized Zone - not sure if this is really the long form) in the router where you have it going to 192.168.1.70

As for the source IP so all connections would show the 192.18.1.70 connections, that is the part I am not sure how to do and maybe you can specify what make/model of router it is as some might have that function and some might now even though it might not be in the GUI but it might be in the command line interface.