How do I get port forwarding to work with loopback addresses in SecureCRT® for Mac OS X?

SecureCRT users who have used SecureCRT on the Windows platform may be accustomed to being able to specify loopback addresses other than "localhost" or "127.0.0.1" when manually selecting the local IP address on which to allow connections in port forward configurations.

Specifying loopback addresses like "127.0.0.2" or any 127.* loopback address works "out of the box" in a Windows environment because the Windows operating system has built-in support for such loopback addresses.

In contrast, Mac OS X only provides SecureCRT with the following network interfaces "out of the box":

• The machine's IP address
• localhost
• 127.0.0.1

Mac OS X users with root or administrator privileges may be able to use the "ifconfig" command to configure aliases for additional loopback address within Mac OS X for use with port forwarding configurations in SecureCRT. For example, issuing the following command within a "Local Shell" connection within SecureCRT would create an additional "127.0.0.2" loopback alias:

sudo ifconfig lo0 alias 127.0.0.2/32

Note: "sudo" is used to launch the command because "ifconfig" requires root privileges. If you do not have root/administrative privileges on your Mac OS X machine, contact your system administrator for assistance in getting additional loopback addresses set up for use with SecureCRT.