Internetwork Packet Exchange

Internetwork Packet Exchange (IPX) is the network layer in the IPX/SPX . IPX is derived from Xerox Network Systems' . It may act as a transport layer protocol as well.

The IPX/SPX protocol suite was very popular through the late 1980s into the mid-1990s because it was used by the Novell NetWare network operating system. Because of Novell Netware popularity the IPX became a prominent internetworking protocol.

A big advantage of IPX was a small memory footprint of the IPX driver, which was vital for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows up to the version Windows 95 because of limited size of the conventional memory. Another IPX advantage is an easy configuration of the client computers. However, IPX does not scale well for large networks such as the Internet, and as such, IPX usage decreased as the boom of the Internet made TCP/IP nearly universal. Computers and networks can run multiple , so almost all IPX sites will be running TCP/IP as well to allow for Internet connectivity. It is also possible to run later Novell products without IPX, with the beginning of full support for both IPX and TCP/IP by NetWare version 5 in late 1998.

A big advantage of IPX protocol is its little or no need for configuration. In the time when protocols for did not exist and the protocol for centralized assigning of addresses was not common, the IPX network could be configured almost automatically. A client computer uses the MAC address of its network card as the node address, and learns what it needs to know about the network topology from the servers or routers – routes are propagated by , services by .

A small IPX network administrator had to care only

Each IPX packet begins with a header with the following structure:

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