3Com 10014299 manual Configuring IPX, IPX address

24 CONFIGURING IPX

This chapter contains information on the following topics:

■IPX Protocol Overview

■Configure IPX

IPX Protocol Overview Novell IPX protocol is a connectionless protocol. Though both data and destination IPX address are included in IPX packet, the protocol cannot confirm whether a packet has been forwarded successfully. Such functions are provided by the protocol at the layer above IPX. In IPX, any IPX packet is considered as an independent entity, not related to any other IPX packets logically or sequentially.

In network model, IPX protocol is in network layer and is the only path for information transmission between the upper-layer protocol and the lower-layer protocol. IPX protocol functions to fill in addresses, route and forward information packets. For packets generated at the upper-layer, IPX forwards them out directly. For user data packets, IPX will first find the correct path in RIP route information table, and then forward them out.

IPX address

IPX address consists of network and node, represented as network.node. Network number is the unique identifier of the physical network, which is 4-byte long and is expressed by eight hexadecimal digits. The preamble 0 can be omitted and not input.

Node value is, of 6 bytes long, the unique identifier of one node. Every two bytes are followed by ".", and then the node value is divided into three groups. Each group is represented with four hexadecimal numbers with the preamble 0 omitted.

The following is an example of IPX address:

bc.0.0cb.47

Here, the network ID is bc (more specifically, it is 000000bc), the node value is 0.0cb.47 (more specifically, it is 0000.00cb.0047). All digits are hexadecimal. In the command help, IPX address is expressed in the form of N.H.H.H.

RIP

A router mainly functions to forward packets between networks. When a client sends a packet between networks, instead of knowing what path the packet should pass to reach the destination, it only knows to transmit the packet to the nearest router and forward it via the next router. So a router must provide the