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From: Terry Lambert <terry@cs.weber.edu>
Subject: Re: SAMBA and NETWARE mounting
Organization: Utah Valley State College, Orem, Utah
Date: Fri, 20 Jan 1995 23:53:14 GMT
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rob@pe1chl.ampr.org (Rob Janssen) wrote:
[ ... me, on interest in IPX ... ]
> >Seems like an exercise in futility for a protocol which is so
> >poorly routable.
>
> Please explain. How is IPX worse in routability than IP?
> Because of those nice 32-bit network numbers, so that you don't have
> to use cramped subnetting schemes?
> Are you referring to the timing problems in NCP? Do you think these
> are a design issue? (I think they are an implementation issue)
IPX routing is via SAP advertising.
SPX in theory supports sliding windows as of SPX II, but in
practice, you can't turn it on *and* maintain backward compatability.
Each bridge has to have at least a partial router implementation
(hence the Novell-coined term "brouter").
SAP advertising rots. Not only is there a hop count limitation
(16 hops), you can easily get SAP storms.
Nearly any IPX network administrator can tell you about "SAP storms"
if they have 10 or more nodes.
Reserved port ("well known service") assignment is a closed process;
there is no equivalent to the IETF.
Name resoloution is via an attachment to either the directory
services or bindery of a NetWare file server. Otherwise you just
have numbers, which is OK if you are a client in an existing.
Anecdotally, when USL came up on the corporate network, they had
to put SAP restriction in their CISCO because their net effectively
crashed almost immediately. This is a well known gotcha, so I
suppose you can blame USL for not being "a Novell shop", so to
speak. 8-).
If this wasn't enough, Windows 95, which is going to be installed
by default on most machines sold after 2 years from now (just as
current machines have DOS, even though you don't want it) comes with
TCP/IP. The LanMan TCP/IP for windows and DOS is downloadable from
ftp.microsoft.com, for free.
The defacto standard for "the information super-overused-phrase"
is TCP/IP, and will continue to be for the forseeable future.
IPX is worth the effort to support legacy systems, but not
otherwise.
Terry Lambert
terry@cs.weber.edu
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.