Verifying IPX Connectivity and Troubleshooting

IPX ping is a useful tool in helping to identify IPX connectivity issues. Two different types of pings are available in IPX. The first, a Cisco Echo, is Cisco proprietary; only IOS devices answer these Echo packets. The second, a Novell Standard Echo, is supported by IOS devices and NetWare servers running version 1.0 or later of the NLSP specification.

From an IOS device in EXEC nonprivileged mode, you can send Cisco Echoes using the IOS EXEC command ping ipx . The IOS EXEC command ping ipx sends five 100-byte IPX Cisco Echoes to a given IPX address, as shown in the following example on the SF-Core-1 router:

 SF-Core-1#  ping ipx 10.0000.0c0c.23ce  Type escape sequence to abort. Sending 5, 100-byte IPX cisco Echoes to 10.0000.0c0c.23ce, timeout is 2 seconds: !!!!! Success rate is 100 percent (5/5), round-trip min/avg/max = 1/1/4 ms 

In the preceding example, you can see five IPX Cisco Echoes sent and five replies from the target address. Table 6-2 shows the meaning of the characters displayed by the router for each IPX ping sent.

Table 6-2. IPX Ping Command Response Characters

!	An exclamation point denotes the receipt of a reply from the target address.
.	A period indicates that the network server timed out while waiting for a reply from the target address.
U	An IPX destination unreachable error was received.
C	An IPX congestion experienced packet was received.
I	A user manually interrupted the test.
?	An unknown IPX packet type was received.
&	The IPX packet lifetime was exceeded.

In privileged mode, the IOS EXEC command ping can be used to send either Cisco Echoes or Novell Standard Echoes. The privileged mode ping command also enables you to specify multiple characteristics of the echoes sent, such as the number of echoes to repeat, the size of the echoes, and the timeout period to wait for an echo. In the next example, we send an IPX ping from the ZIP router SF-Core-1 using the privileged mode ping command:

 SF-Core-1#  ping  Protocol [ip]:  ipx  Target IPX address:  10.0000.0c0c.23ce  Repeat count [5]: Datagram size [100]: Timeout in seconds [2]: Verbose [n]: Novell Standard Echo [n]: Type escape sequence to abort. Sending 5 100-byte IPX echoes to 10.0000.0c0c.23ce, timeout is 2 seconds. !!!!! Success rate is 100 percent (5/5) 

You can obtain overall statistics about the operation of the IPX protocol on a Cisco router with the show ipx traffic command. It includes counters for such information as the total number of packets received and sent by the router; the number of broadcasts received and sent; SAP, IPX RIP, EIGRP, and NLSP statistics; and whether the router has sent or received IPX Echoes. The cumulative counters in show ipx traffic are reset only when the router is reloaded or power-cycled. Following is an example of the output of the show ipx traffic command on the ZIP SF-Core-1 router:

 SF-Core-1#  show ipx traffic  System Traffic for 0.0000.0000.0001 System-Name: zipnet Rcvd:   603143 total, 94947 format errors, 0 checksum errors, 0 bad hop count,         0 packets pitched, 401 local destination, 0 multicast Bcast:  406 received, 6352 sent Sent:   6355 generated, 0 forwarded         0 encapsulation failed, 19 no route SAP:    368 SAP requests, 0 SAP replies, 2 servers         0 SAP Nearest Name requests, 0 replies         0 SAP General Name requests, 0 replies         27 SAP advertisements received, 138 sent         20 SAP flash updates sent, 0 SAP format errors RIP:    6 RIP requests, 0 RIP replies, 5 routes         5629 RIP advertisements received, 6139 sent         0 RIP flash updates sent, 0 RIP format errors Echo:   Rcvd 0 requests, 0 replies         Sent 0 requests, 0 replies         0 unknown: 0 no socket, 0 filtered, 0 no helper         0 SAPs throttled, freed NDB len 0 Watchdog:         0 packets received, 0 replies spoofed Queue lengths:         IPX input: 0, SAP 0, RIP 0, GNS 0         SAP throttling length: 0/(no limit), 0 nets pending lost route reply         Delayed process creation: 0 EIGRP:  Total received 0, sent 0         Updates received 0, sent 0         Queries received 0, sent 0         Replies received 0, sent 0         SAPs received 0, sent 0 NLSP:   Level-1 Hellos received 0, sent 0 

In addition to the troubleshooting and verification commands presented in this section, numerous privileged IOS EXEC debug commands exist to aid in determining the operation of the IPX protocol on the router. These debug commands provide both general and detailed diagnostic output that can aid in troubleshooting and in verifying the operation of the router, routing protocols, and other functions. Some of the more common debug commands used for IPX are summarized in Table 6-3.

Table 6-3. debug Commands for IPX

Command	Description
debug ipx eigrp	Displays contents of IPX EIGRP packets sent and received by the router.
debug ipx nlsp	Displays the activities of the NLSP protocol running on the router.
debug ipx packet	Displays the source and destination IPX addresses of packets that are routed by the router.
debug ipx routing	Displays changes that occur in the IPX routing table as the result of route additions and deletions.
debug ipx sap	Displays information about SAP advertisements sent and received by the router.

As mentioned in earlier chapters, some debug commands can adversely affect router performance. Care should be taken when using these privileged EXEC commands.