IPX

Overview
Internetwork Packet Exchange (IPX) is an antiquated networking standard from Novell as part of the IPX/SPX networking protocol. IPX/SPX was a popular networking protocol in the lats 1980's and early 1990's. However, growth of the internet made TCP/IP a near-universal standard.

Technical Details
Each network is assigned a unique, 32-bit hexadecimal addresses (0x1-0xFFFFFFFE. Each hosts has a 48-bit addresses which defaults to the MAC address. The network id for the current network is 00:00:00:00 and the broadcast address is FF:FF:FF:FF.

IPX addresses are similar to IP addresses, with the netmask bits of the address set to 1 and the node address set to zero. IP's Address Resolution Protocol may be needed if the IPX host id is not set to the device MAC address.

Links

 * RFC 1132 - A Standard for the Transmission of 802.2 Packets over IPX Networks