Huawei Quidway S6500 Series Operation Manual page 117

Operation Manual - Network Protocol
Quidway S6500 Series Ethernet Switches
7.1 IPX Protocol Overview
Internetwork Packet Exchange (IPX) protocol is a network layer protocol in the
NetWare protocol suite. It is similar to IP in the TCP/IP protocol suite. IPX functions to
address, route and forward packets.
IPX is a connectionless protocol. Though an IPX packet includes a destination IPX
address in addition to the data, there is no guarantee of successful delivery. Packet
acknowledgement and connection control must be provided by protocols above IPX. In
IPX, each IPX packet is considered an independent entity that has no logical or
sequential relationship with any other IPX packets.
7.1.1 IPX Address Structure
IPX and IP use different address structures. An IPX address comprises two parts: the
network number and the node address; it is in the format of network.node.
A network number identifies the network where a site is located. It is four bytes long and
expressed by eight hexadecimal numbers. A node address identifies a node on the
network. Like a MAC address, it is six bytes long and written with the bytes being
separated into three 2-byte parts by "-". The node address cannot be a broadcast or
multicast address. For example, in the IPX address bc.0-0cb-47, bc (or 000000bc) is
the network number and 0-0cb-47 (0000-00cb-0047) is the node address. You can also
write an IPX address in the form of N.H-H-H, where N is the network number and
H-H-H is the node address.
7.1.2 Routing Information Protocol
IPX uses the Routing Information Protocol (RIP) to maintain and advertise dynamic
routing information. With IPX enabled, the switch exchanges routing information with
other neighbors through RIP to maintain an internetwork routing information database
(also known as a routing table) to accommodate to the network changes. When the
switch receives a packet, it looks up the routing table for the next site and if there is any,
forwards the packet. The routing information can be configured statically or collected
dynamically.
This chapter introduces RIP in IPX. For the RIP configurations on an IP network, refer
to the routing protocol section in this manual.
Chapter 7 IPX Configuration
Huawei Technologies Proprietary
7-1
Chapter 7 IPX Configuration