IPX Routing Configuration

The assignment of IPX network.node addresses to IOS devices and interfaces is necessary to route IPX. Another vital component is IPX routing. Routers must be routing IPX and have routes to IPX networks in an internetwork to enable full communication, just as in IP networks. To determine where IPX networks exist, routers use a routing table created by routing algorithms, which are also known as routing protocols.

Within IPX, routing protocols can be either static or dynamic in nature. In static protocols, you manually configure the IPX routing table with the network path information. Dynamic routing protocols rely on the routers themselves to advertise information about the different IPX networks to which they are attached. IPX uses three different dynamic routing protocols, which are examined in the section "Configuring IPX Routing Protocols" later in this chapter.