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ost network administrators have, at some point, encoun-

tered IPX for two reasons: first, Novell NetWare uses IPX as its default pro-
tocol; second, it was the most popular network operating system during the
late 1980s and early 1990s. As a result, millions of IPX networks have been
installed. But Novell changed things with the release of NetWare 5. TCP/IP
is now the default communications protocol instead of IPX, although Novell
still supports IPX. Why do they still bother? Well, considering the multitude
of installed IPX clients and servers, it would be pretty impractical to yank the
support for it.

There's little doubt that IPX will be around for a while, so it's no surprise

that the Cisco IOS provides full support for large IPX internetworks. But to
really take advantage of Novell IPX's functions and features, we need to
review the way it operates and handles addressing because it varies signifi-
cantly from the TCP/IP method we covered earlier. Armed with a solid grasp
of things IPX, we'll then explore the configuration of IPX in the Cisco IOS
and, from there, cover the monitoring of IPX traffic.

Introduction to Novell IPX

ovell Internetwork Packet Exchange (IPX) has been in use since

its release in the early 1980s. It's quite similar to Xerox Network Systems
(XNS), which was developed by Xerox at its Palo Alto Research Center
in the 1960s; it even shares a likeness with TCP/IP. IPX is really a family
of protocols that coexist and interact to empower sound network
communications.

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