Chapter 4. Shooting Trouble with Novell IPX

Much great networking matter came from Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Novell NetWare is no exception; it was derived from Xerox Network Systems (XNS) in the early 1980s. It is a client-server network operating system (NOS) well known for its file and print services.

Cisco routers are found in Novell networks because they offer features not available in Novell's own product implementations. This chapter focuses on common issues in supporting Novell clients, servers, and Cisco routers in a day-to-day practical environment. This chapter assumes knowledge of the previous chapters, which dealt with protocol characteristics, models, troubleshooting methods, support tools, resources, and TCP/IP communications.

Throughout the chapter, you will apply a layered troubleshooting methodology to analyze real-world Novell IPX network issues, such as encapsulation, addressing, protocols, client initialization, and server login including routing and Service Advertisement Protocol (SAP) traffic. You will also identify targets and document the results using IPX ping, show, clear, debug, monitor, config, inetcfg, and other troubleshooting utilities; explore precaptured NetWare-related protocol analyzer files and sniff the network on your own to spot the issues. Analyze, break, fix, and learn from doing is what troubleshooting is all about. Supporting Novell is no different.

This chapter covers the following topics:

  • Scenario: Shooting Trouble with IPX

  • Protocols and Packets

  • Addressing

  • Routing Protocols

  • Trouble Tickets

  • Trouble Tickets Solutions

Supporting Website Files

You can find files and links to utilities that support this book on the Cisco Press website at www.ciscopress.com/1587200570. Even if you do not have a lab, you can take advantage of the supporting configuration files including the logs to understand device input and output. The files are listed throughout the chapters in italics.

In order to be able to read and work with some of the supporting files offered at www.ciscopress.com/1587200570, you may want to download some of the programs listed in Table I-1 in the Introduction.


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