SPX/IPX Protocol

This appendix describes the format of a listen address when the protocol between two machines is Novell Netware SPX/IPX. It also gives you the protocol- and platform-specific information to set up connection data entries.

Listen Address Format

A listen address is a unique identifier used for interprocess communications. A Communications Server has two kinds of listen addresses. It uses one to receive messages from local processes and the other to receive messages from remote Communications Servers.

This section describes the format of the listen address used to receive messages from remote processes when the network protocol is SPX/IPX.

Note: To view or change your instance's listen addresses, use the Configuration-By-Forms (cbf) utility or Configuration Manager (vcbf).

Windows

An SPX/IPX listen address has the following format:

xxxxxxxx

where:

• xxxxxxxx

  Is a hexadecimal number from 00000000 to ffffffff

  The listen address is the SPX/IPX "net number," an 8-digit hexadecimal number. Both the net address and the 12-digit node number for a server are repeated in the errlog.log file when the Communications Server starts.

Connection Data Entry Information:

Protocol: nvlspx

Network address: node

where:

• node

  Is a 12-digit hexadecimal SPX node number

UNIX and VMS

SPX treats listen addresses as a 16-bit quantity, normally represented in hexadecimal as 0000 - FFFF. As a convenience, the Ingres SPX/IPX protocol driver recognizes an installation ID (followed by an optional digit) as a listen address and translates that into a 16-bit value in the range 4000 - 4FFF, which Novell has reserved for dynamically allocated listen addresses.

An SPX/IPX listen address has two possible formats:

ab[n] or xxxx

where:

• a

  An alphabetic character (case is not significant)

• b

  An alphabetic character or a decimal digit (0-9)

• n

  The 0 or 1 digit

• xxxx

  A hexadecimal number from 0000 to ffff

The format ab[n] is the default format, where ab is the installation ID (found in II_INSTALLATION) and n = 0. The digit n is incremented by 1 for each successive Communications server started in an installation. For example, if the installation has two Communications Servers using the default format for their listen addresses, the addresses are ab0 and ab1. Only two Communications Servers using the default listen addresses for SPX/IPX can be started in a single Ingres instance.

To accept a connection from Ingres running on a PC, the listen address must be set to 6582. The PC currently does not support selecting alternate listen addresses.

Connection Data Entry Information:

Protocol: spx

Network address: network.node

where:

• network

  Is a hexadecimal SPX network number

• node

  Is a hexadecimal SPX node number

The Novell utility getlan reports the local network and node numbers for the internal network and all external network connections. Because most hosts have only a single external network connection, getlan normally reports two networks. The internal network is always the first in the list (Lan number 0), and it is the address Ingres Net requires.

For example, if getlan reports:

The network address is:

119D9D21.1

Leading zeroes are not important.

Listen Address: ab[n] | xxxx