Previous Table of Contents Next IPX/SPX IPX/SPX is usually a pretty reliable little protocol. Most IPX/SPX troubleshooting comes down to "Can you see it?" and "Am I running out of table space on my hardware routers?" If you run a Novell shop-or even if you use IPX/SPX to talk to your NT servers-you can use IPXPING.NLM to check the response of IPX stations. If you want to run IPXPING from a DOS or Windows box, you'll want to go to Novell's site (http://support.novell.com/cgi-bin/show_file?FileName=ipxpng.exe) and get the IPXPING.EXE file. This allows you to ping servers or workstations. You ping a workstation based on its IPX network number plus its MAC address, like this: F:\PUBLIC>ipxping 1d 0000c9108c76 0000001D:0000C9108C76 is alive You can also ping a server based on its IPX network number and MAC address, or you can use its unique internal IPX number and use a 1 for the MAC address, like so: F:\PUBLIC>ipxping ddeeff 1 00DDEEFF:000000000001 is alive If you have non-Novell routers in the picture, you should also know that some routers have settable limits. If you start to overrun these limits, you'll experience trouble. If you're having trouble between two sites connected by a hardware router, you should check your router's IPX Service Advertisement Protocol (SAP) as well as its routing table. Most routers will tell you that you're using x entries out of a possible y. If x equals y, you're probably overflowing your tables and should add more entries in the router configuration program. ______________________________________________________________ The biggest cause I've seen of SAP table overflows is the addition of a lot of standalone print servers, such as HP JetDirect cards. These broadcast their presence to the network, and every router will propagate this broadcast to every other router. Most folks I know of have a lot of printers-if each printer has a SAP entry, the table starts to fill up quickly. In addition to filling up your SAP table, numerous SAP entries can also slow down your WAN. Check your router documentation for ways to filter unwanted SAPs from propagating to your entire network. ______________________________________________________________ You can display the names and numbers of IPX/SPX services your Novell network knows about by typing the following command at a NetWare server prompt: display servers Similarly, if you want to see the addresses and quantity of IPX/SPX networks, type the following at the console prompt: display networks These are also good commands to ensure your NetWare server is seeing the network in general. Summary It would be nice if you could simply concentrate on improving your network neighborhood each day. Unfortunately, grim reality dictates that in addition to taking proactive measures to avoid or ameliorate trouble, you also need to know how to react. Fine-tuning your reaction habits every day is a good way to lower your stress level and make you a more effective troubleshooter. Telephone and "trouble call" skills play a large part in determining whether a problem is systemic or local. Sometimes, however, you need to go take a look for yourself, use a remote control program, or let the user guide you to re-create the problem on your workstation. Once you've ruled out a local problem, you'll want to practice your connectivity-checking habits. Tools such as ping, traceroute, arp, and nslookup, in conjunction with the TCP/IP loopback mechanism, can show you where on the network a problem lies. As you make your way from the local loopback device to the ultimate destination, you'll continue to gather good information about what the problem is-and what it is not. Always troubleshoot numerically before bringing name services into the picture so as not to confuse an issue that may already be quite complex. IPX/SPX troubleshooting is fairly simplistic, and the few tools you have can point out connectivity problems quite quickly. Some problems can be related to router table overflow, and you can either use router commands or NetWare server-based commands to show you the number of SAP and route entries on your IPX/SPX network. Workshop Q&A Q What happens if I ping the loopback address and it fails? A You might want to remove and reinstall the TCP/IP protocol from your Network Control Panel. This could fix corrupt TCP/IP stack files. This isn't too common, though, and might be symptomatic of major problems on the workstation. Q Hey, can you tell me more about this nslookup tool, please? A This is a really great tool, but in my experience, nslookup is more useful in a complex DNS environment such as the Internet; therefore, you'll see more about nslookup in Hour 19 than you did here. Most networks with fewer than 200 nodes have a very simple DNS environment-checking the configuration at the workstation after doing a ping of a symbolic name tends to show DNS problems just fine. I mention it here because as you get more sophisticated with DNS, it might become part of your initial rote troubleshooting. Q Are there any more IPX/SPX information-gathering commands? A Yes. You can type track on at your server console and watch your IPX RIP routes go back and forth between your IPX routers. This is more like a sideshow (unless you're really into the IPX routing thing). Most times, other troubleshooting methods are more than adequate to deal with IPX/SPX problems. Previous Table of Contents Next