LANs /

IPX-cellence overlooked?

By Kevin Tolly
Network World, 06/10/02

In a recent column I challenged "high-end" IPX users to speak up about what they were doing with IPX that could not be done better with IP. While not deluged with responses, those who did respond took their IPX very seriously. They cited specific benefits over TCP/IP and don't look forward to the day they might have to relegate it to the junk heap.

One die-hard user said that the most compelling reason to use IPX services on the LAN is for security. Running internal applications and services on a protocol that can be blocked easily and controlled at the edge would make it more difficult for hackers, he maintains.

He's got a good point. Furthermore, one would have to imagine that 99.99% of hacking activity centers on IP. IPX hacking just doesn't offer the same return on investment to the hacker.

Another respondent cited lower total cost-of-ownership when using IPX. He had tremendous trouble configuring multiple network printer servers with friendly names first via a gateway Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol server and then via static addresses. However, his troubles vanished when IPX was configured as the network protocol on the server supporting the printer management console.

One technician put it simply: "You have to admire a protocol that uses a [network interface card/media access control] address in its addressing scheme . . . Elegant!" However, his company's network has recently stopped routing IPX.

Another IPX advocate admitted that his company has weaned the protocol from its WANs, but uses it on LANs for a number of reasons, including to maintain support for legacy applications, such as payroll, that were customized to run over IPX networks that support NetWare-related Btrieve.

Interestingly, this last user also hits on another issue of IPX excellence: uptime. Seems he's the lone NetWare expert left at his company, which has added 20 people to support the burgeoning population of Windows servers.

NetWare server uptime is high and "abends" (short for "abnormal ending" and also known as "Blue Screens of Death" in Microsoftese) are so rare that an occurrence is headline news at the company and he takes the heat. Meanwhile, he says Windows server outages are so common, they are a given and people rarely complain.

I applaud all our IPX advocates for speaking up. It appears there still are pockets of IPX out there on enterprise networks. And while a few users expressed the need to tap into device statistics on the performance of IPX, there was no resounding chorus for such support or for vendors to prove their IPX routing performance. Vendors offering IPX routing in their switches don't seem to be removing it - but we don't see any new switches on the market touting such support. Fortunately, one can always run IPX on a Layer 2 network. Layer 2 "bridges" (as switches really are) are protocol independent - even folks with SNA and DECnet will be forever supported.

But that's another story . . .

So in a nutshell, it seems that with all the finesse of IPX, it is used primarily to support legacy applications and for protection against hacker attacks.

And while IPX as a routing protocol will remain an inherent part of a switch's capabilities for many vendors, judging by the number of respondents, and not their fervor, it seems that the user community has little interest in IPX numbers, let alone any IPX-pectations.