I might be terribly late and new to handle this thread. But still..
Why cant the address of the node and the "next" node pointed be stored in a table
If we could tabulate this way
node present: (present node addr) (next node address)
node 1: addr1: 0x100 addr2: 0x200 ( no present node address till this point had 0x200)
node 2: addr2: 0x200 addr3: 0x300 ( no present node address till this point had 0x300)
node 3: addr3: 0x300 addr4: 0x400 ( no present node address till this point had 0x400)
node 4: addr4: 0x400 addr5: 0x500 ( no present node address till this point had 0x500)
node 5: addr5: 0x500 addr6: 0x600 ( no present node address till this point had 0x600)
node 6: addr6: 0x600 addr4: 0x400 ( ONE present node address till this point had 0x400)
Hence there is a cycle formed.