Protocol Selection; Planning Migration - Novell NETWARE 6-DOCUMENTATION Manual

Protocol Selection

Planning Migration

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Server Communications Administration Guide
Previous versions of NetWare used Internetwork Packet Exchange (IPX), a
proprietary protocol developed by Novell
NetWare 6 uses TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol),
IPX, or a combination of both IP and IPX.
With increasing access to worldwide data exchange through the Internet, IP
has become so popular that many companies'networks now require it. But IPX
and IP are two separate protocols. If you run both, you must maintain both.
Administering routers, bridges, switches and other hardware components
required for multiprotocol network communications can prove prohibitive.
Potentially, migrating from IPX to IP could prove costly, and there are some
important considerations. Attempting to move a large number of servers and
clients to NetWare 6 simultaneously won't generally be practical. It may be
neccessary to introduce IP components over time, depending on the size and
complexity of your network. You might choose to upgrade only servers as a
preliminary phase, and later upgrade clients. To understand your migration
options, see "Planning Migration" on page
Although Novell now recommends the use of pure IP on your network, small,
private networks might be more efficient using an IPX-only implementation.
As you'll see in the discussion regarding addressing, IPX requires no special
address resolution protocols—it can assign addresses dynamically, and
addresses are abundant. IP is better suited for large IP-based networks
attached to the Internet, to WAN links, or where IP is the exclusively required
protocol. If you don't require IP for any of these reasons, and you can use a
pure IPX network, you might find IPX implementation easier to administer.
However you choose to migrate from IPX to IP, the cost and difficulty usually
associated with a major change such as this is offset by NetWare 6 migration
tools designed to facilitate migration without loss of connectivity or IPX
application support. The migration tools include the following:
Compatibility Mode (CM) (page 31)
Migration Agent (MA) (page 32)
These components can be loaded on the same server. The CMD runs on all
NetWare 6 servers by default. Only one MA is required for each IPX network
connected to the IP backbone.
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, for network communications.
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