Re: sockstat local address *:*

I believe it refers to ANY IPv6 addres.

The distinction between an unknown/unspecified address is vague in IPv4, so
we use 0.0.0.0/0 to represent any host on the network, but in IPv6 there is
a subtle difference.

For the most part however, people use :: to represent a contiguous string
of 0's.

In an IPv6 address, any sequence of contiguous zeros can be replaced with ::
so:

   - 0.0.0.0/0 => 0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000 => :: => *:*
   - fe80:0000:0000:0000:2000:0aff:fea7:0f7c => fe80::2000:0aff:fea7:0f7c

The representation using wildcards however allows a finer control of
address patterns. For instance, :: would not match fe80::2000:0aff:fea7:0f7c,
but *:* will.

This difference isn't really meaningful to any device that isn't performing
routing, but when it comes time to select optimal routes to aggregated
address spaces, the wildcard notation allows more flexible selection of
destination networks.
From
https://superuser.com/questions/1095793/do-0-0-0-00-and-represent-the-same-thing?noredirect=1&lq=1

On Thu, Nov 28, 2024 at 6:19 PM Markus Graf <markus.graf@markusgraf.net>
wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
> what does the *:* in the LOCAL ADDRESS column stand for?
>
> sockstat -4l
>
> USER     COMMAND    PID   FD  PROTO  LOCAL ADDRESS         FOREIGN
> ADDRESS
> markus   soffice.bi 84571 9   tcp4   *:*                   *:*
> root     wpa_suppli 49000 3   udp4   *:*                   *:*
> other lines deleted
>
> This can't mean listening on all ports on all interfaces, can it?
>
> The system runs just fine.
>
> The question is a bit hard to goole with the two asterisks :(
>
> Best regards
>
> Markus
>
>