diff --git a/test/system/500-networking.bats b/test/system/500-networking.bats
index a824ebcd7..b4548c78a 100644
--- a/test/system/500-networking.bats
+++ b/test/system/500-networking.bats
@@ -65,8 +65,13 @@ load helpers
     myport=54321
 
     # Container will exit as soon as 'nc' receives input
+    # We use '-n -v' to give us log messages showing an incoming connection
+    # and its IP address; the purpose of that is guaranteeing that the
+    # remote IP is not 127.0.0.1 (podman PR #9052).
+    # We could get more parseable output by using $NCAT_REMOTE_ADDR,
+    # but busybox nc doesn't support that.
     run_podman run -d --userns=keep-id -p 127.0.0.1:$myport:$myport \
-               $IMAGE nc -l -p $myport
+               $IMAGE nc -l -n -v -p $myport
     cid="$output"
 
     # emit random string, and check it
@@ -74,7 +79,20 @@ load helpers
     echo "$teststring" | nc 127.0.0.1 $myport
 
     run_podman logs $cid
-    is "$output" "$teststring" "test string received on container"
+    # High-level overview of received output. We also check it line by line
+    # but this is a basic test; if it fails, we can see full output, which
+    # is helpful because failure here indicates something is VERY wrong.
+    is "$output" "listening on .*:$myport .*connect to .*$teststring" \
+       "Basic check on received output"
+
+    # Line-by-line output check. If any of these fail, we will not see
+    # the full output of 'nc'. The most important check here is the
+    # second line, in which we check for a 10.X remote IP (not 127.*)
+    is "${lines[0]}" "listening on \[::\]:$myport ..." "First line of output"
+    is "${lines[1]}" \
+       "connect to \[::ffff:10\..*\]:$myport from \[::ffff:10\..*\]:" \
+       "Second output line from nc"
+    is "${lines[2]}" "$teststring" "test string received on container"
 
     # Clean up
     run_podman rm $cid