Linux Network Administrator's Guide, Second Edition

Chapter 15. IPX and the NCP Filesystem

Long before Microsoft learned about networking, and even before the Internet was known outside academic circles, corporate environments shared files and printers using file and print servers based on the Novell NetWare operating system and associated protocols.^[82] Many of these corporate users still have legacy networks using these protocols and want to integrate this support with their new TCP/IP support.

Linux supports not only the TCP/IP protocols, but also the suite of protocols used by the Novell Corporation’s NetWare operating system. These protocols are distant cousins of TCP/IP, and while they perform similar sorts of functions, they differ in a number of ways and are unfortunately incompatible.

Linux has both free and commercial software offerings to provide support for integration with the Novell products.

We’ll provide a brief description of the protocols themselves in this chapter, but we focus on how to configure and use free software to allow Linux to interoperate with Novell products.

Xerox, Novell, and History

First, let’s look at where the protocols came from and what they look like. In the late 1970s, the Xerox Corporation developed and published an open standard called the Xerox Network Specification (XNS). The Xerox Network Specification described a series of protocols designed for general purpose internetworking, with a strong emphasis on the use of local area networks. There were two primary networking protocols ...