NetWare® has traditionally used IPXTM and its protocols for network communication. NetWare 4 supported IP networks through NetWare/IPTM. The release of NetWare 6 allows a choice of running networks with just IPX, with both IP and IPX, or with pure IP.
The Internet Protocol comprises a set of publicly available protocols that provides the means by which computers communicate on the Internet.
IPX comprises a set of protocols that facilitate communication between computers on NetWare networks.
In order to make IP run on NetWare, the public protocols of IP had to be incorporated into, and replace, the proprietary protocols in NetWare. Since NDS® is the heart of NetWare, it was used to bring all the Internet Protocols together in NetWare 6. This makes it possible to configure and maintain the protocols using NetWare Administrator.
Compatibility Mode (CM) maintains backward compatibility with IPX NetWare systems. You can install a server or client using one of three methods: IP (with compatibility mode), IPX, or both IP and IPX. CM provides translation between IP and IPX by recognizing IPX packets and then determining how to forward them. A Migration Agent (MA) on the server uses CM to bridge IP and IPX networks while maintaining protocol purity on each of the respective networks.
No other networking software vendor has combined Internet protocols with a proven networking platform to provide a pure IP networking solution. Novell® has accomplished this because of the flexibility and scalability inherent in NDS. By extending the NDS schema and adding objects, Novell has built a network operating system out of publicly available Intenet Protocols and made it work with IPX for backward compatibility. The Server Operating System Communications documentation outlines and contrasts the protocols used in Novell's IP and IPX implementations of NetWare 6.
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