Configuring IPX Routing Commands

As mentioned earlier in this chapter, you enable IPX routing with the global configuration command ipx routing . After IPX routing is enabled, the router builds the routing table used for routing. By default, when an IPX address is configured on a LAN or WAN interface and that interface is placed in an operational state, the IPX network address for that interface is placed in the routing table. All operational interfaces connected to the router are placed in the routing table. If only a single router is in your network, it has information about all of its connected IPX networks, and there is no need to configure static or dynamic routing. Only when two or more routers exist in the network are static or dynamic routing table entries needed.

You can use the IOS EXEC command show ipx route to view the IPX routing table. When entered with no parameters, the entire IPX routing table is displayed. The following example shows the SF-2 router on the ZIP network with only the connected operational interfaces and no additional routing table entries:

 SF-2#  show ipx route  Codes: C - Connected primary network,    c - Connected secondary network        S - Static, F - Floating static, L - Local (internal), W - IPXWAN        R - RIP, E - EIGRP, N - NLSP, X - External, A - Aggregate        s - seconds, u - uses, U - Per-user static 3 Total IPX routes. Up to 1 parallel paths and 16 hops allowed. No default route known. C         10  (NOVELL-FDDI),  Fd0 C        150 (NOVELL-ETHER),  Et1 C        200 (NOVELL-ETHER),  Et0 

The show ipx route command provides useful data to the network administrator and is the key tool used to determine what path an IPX packet will follow through the network. The output of this command is similar to the show ip route command that displays the IP routing table, as discussed in Chapter 4.

The first section of output is the legend for the first column of the table. It tells you from where a route was derived. Each of the last three lines in this IPX routing table shows a single route to an IPX network, how the route was derived, the IPX LAN encapsulation method, and the interface associated with the route. The "C" in the first column indicates that all these routes are known from operational connected primary IPX networks. We explore the show ipx route command in the section after the next one, "Verifying IPX Routing Configuration."