TCP Loop Connect

TCP state machine allows that TCP client establishes connection using connect() to itself. Look on diagram and focus on Simultaneous Open part.

Preconditions

Following conditions are needed for the loop:

1. Connection is established from HOST to HOST on the same IP
2. Destination TCP Port has to be from range of ephemeral ports configured on OS
3. Listen port is unbound

Probability

Preconditions don’t automatically guarantee the loop situation. But they are needed. Loop happens when OS bind the TCP port to client attempting to connect on the same. It can happen only for ephemeral ports.

The correctly designed TCP client/server application should not use the ephemeral ports for service side listener. Otherwise there is a chance it will establish unwanted connection to itself - loop.

In general it depends on various conditions like how OS assign ephemeral ports and how TCP client constructs sockets, but probability increases when:

1. TCP client creates for each connection new socket and OS assigns new ephemeral port (done usually in some high-level languages by programmers)

/* 
 * Try establish connection with 127.0.0.1:33333
 * THIS IS BAD EXAMPLE because it behaves like infinite loop at various 
 * conditions 
 */

do {  
    socket = getSockFromSystem();      /* it may use always different ephemeral port */
    connectTo(socket, 127.0.0.1, 33333);  /* it may connect to itself if ephemeral port == 33333 */ 
} while(isNotConnected(socket));

/* ... continue with established connection ... */

Ephemeral ports

For the details please read article describing them, basically on linux they can be displayed using:

$ cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_local_port_range 
32768	61000

Do not use for TCP lister port the value from that range.

Example TCP Client

Compile as gcc -o tcploop tcploop.c

/* tcploop.c */
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <assert.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <arpa/inet.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <netdb.h>
#include <string.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  int port = 0;
  int sckfd = 0;
  int opt = 1;
  struct sockaddr_in *remote;
  char *ip = "127.0.0.1";
  int rc;
  long n = 0;

  if(argc != 2){
    printf("Usage: %s <listen port>\n", argv[0]);
    exit(1);
  }
  port = atoi(argv[1]);

  /* Set to Localhost:Port */
  remote = (struct sockaddr_in *)malloc(sizeof(struct sockaddr_in *));
  remote->sin_family = AF_INET;
  assert(inet_pton(AF_INET, ip, (void *)(&(remote->sin_addr.s_addr))) > 0);
  remote->sin_port = htons(port);

  /* create socket */
  assert((sckfd = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP)) > 0);
  assert(setsockopt(sckfd, SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, &opt, sizeof(opt)) >= 0);

  printf("Trying to connect..."); fflush(stdout);
  while(1) {
    n++;
    rc = connect(sckfd, (struct sockaddr *)remote, sizeof(struct sockaddr)); 
    if(rc < 0){
      if(n % 1000 == 0) { printf("."); fflush(stdout); }
      continue;
    }
    else {
      printf("Connected after %ld tries\n", n);
      break;
    }
  }
  /* Wait for Enter */
  printf("Press Enter to Continue...\n");
  getchar();
  close(sckfd);
  return 0;
}

Example output

Three commands outputs:

1. Show how Ephemeral port range is configured
2. Invocation of tcploop with port from that range (33333)
3. lsof output for port 33333 in the other terminal

$ cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_local_port_range 
32768	61000

$ ./tcploop 33333
Trying to connect..............Connected after 11263 tries
Press Enter to Continue...

$ lsof -n | grep 33333
COMMAND     PID  USER   FD      TYPE     DEVICE  SIZE/OFF       NODE NAME
tcploop    3440 dixie    3u     IPv4     163396       0t0        TCP 127.0.0.1:33333->127.0.0.1:33333 (ESTABLISHED)