Lesson 3

Selecting Network/Transport Layer Protocols

1-27

TCP/IP is unquestionably the industry standard in network/transport layer protocols,

and it provides all the functionality that any network design could require. When

designing a network, the primary drawback to selecting TCP/IP is the individual con-

figuration required for each computer. On a TCP/IP network, every computer must

have a unique IP address in addition to other configuration parameters. Originally,

administrators had to individually configure each computer by hand, but today, tech-

nologies such as the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) can automate the

TCP/IP configuration process.

Note There have been several enhancements to TCP/IP in Windows Server 2003 Service

Pack 1. These include turning on SYN attack protection by default, new SYN attack

notifications, and a new TCP port allocation algorithm. However, these enhancements are not

covered in the exam and therefore are not covered in this training kit.

See Also See Chapter 2, “Planning a TCP/IP Network Infrastructure,” for more information

about IP addressing and TCP/IP configuration.

Using IPX

IPX is also a suite of protocols that provides some of the same basic communications

features as TCP/IP. The IPX protocols were developed by Novell for use with their Net-

Ware operating system. Until the release of NetWare version 5 in 1998, computers had

to use IPX to communicate with NetWare servers. However, NetWare 5 included sup-

port for TCP/IP, and it is now possible to eliminate IPX from a NetWare network.

Unlike the TCP/IP standards, which are in the public domain, the IPX standards are

privately owned by Novell, who does not make them available to outside software

developers. As a result, Microsoft developed its own version of the IPX protocols,

called NWLink, to provide the Windows operating systems with NetWare connectiv-

ity. Windows Server 2003 still includes support for NWLink, in the form of a protocol

module called NWLink IPX/ SPX/NetBIOS Compatible Transport Protocol, as do the

other Windows operating systems.

The IPX suite, like TCP/IP, consists of several different protocols. IPX itself is the net-

work layer protocol that carries most of the suite’s traffic. Sequenced Packet Exchange

(SPX) is a connection-oriented transport layer protocol that is the IPX equivalent of

TCP, and the NetWare Core Protocol (NCP) is roughly the equivalent of UDP.

The primary difference between the IPX protocol suite and TCP/IP is that IPX is

designed for use on personal computer LANs only, while TCP/IP can support a net-

work of any type and any size. One reason is that IPX does not have a self-contained