i believe you're very wrong.
IPX is based on Xerox's XNS protocol. it is a client/server protocol and
was developed in the 1970s. Novell adopted it in the 1980s for use with
Netware.
TCP/IP was used by DOD for ARPANET and thus became the protocol of the
internet.
Later versions of IPX allowed for IP encapsulation, but I don't think
Novell turned pure IP until version 5. versions 4.x were IPX that could
be encapsulated with IP if necessary.
Certainly there are security advantages as you describe, but I don't think
"it was the point".
- who feels old now, jeez :(
laura
Devdas Bhagat wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Sep 2001, sari sari spewed into the ether:
> > I'm just a student, so this is probably a dumb question.
> > In a lecture, it was mentioned that ipx was the "older way" oppose
> > to ... maybe vpn... i don't remember, but I was wondering what ipx is
> > and the benifits of using it over newer options? I remember people on
> > this list talking about something with ipx and am curious about
> > it...
> Hmmm, that makes me feel old ;)
> IPX was what Novell boxen used to talk to each other, before the Net
> hit Novell and forced them to switch to TCP/IP.
> The point of using IPX was merely to use another protocol in the
> middle, so that if any attacks werre possible against TCP/IP, the
> attacker would not have the capability to decode the IPX packets and
> thus would be foiled. This was an early attempt at security through
> obscurity, and it may have been moderately successful (Not everyone
> could afford a Netware machine, while IP stacks were relatively more
> common and IPX stacks were not).
> The method used was to send the entire IP packet encapsulated in an IPX
> packet., so that the attacker would have to decode the IPX pasket
> followed by getting data out of the IP packet.
> There were some benefits earlier, but no longer.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Devdas Bhagat
> --
> Don't compare floating point numbers solely for equality.
