You will often see the terms client and server used in this
document. They are normally fairly specific terms but in this document I have
generalised their definitions a little so that they mean the following:
The machine or program that initiates an action or a connection for the purpose of gaining use of some service or data.
The machine or program that accepts incoming connections from multiple remote machines and provides a service or data to those.
These definitions are not very reliable either, but they provide a means of distinguishing the ends of peer to peer systems such as SLIP or PPP which truly do not actually have clients and servers.
Other terms you will see are:
Internet Packet eXchange is a protocol used by the Novell corporation to provide internetworking support for their NetWare(tm) product. IPX is similar in functionality to the IP protocol used by the tcp/ip community.
This is a number which uniquely identifies a particular IPX network. The usual notation for this address is in hexadecimal. An example might look like: 0x23a91002
This is a virtual IPX network. It is virtual because it does not correspond to a physical network. This is used to provide a means of uniquely identifying and addressing a particular IPX host. This is generally only useful to IPX hosts that exist on more than one physical IPX network such as fileservers. The address is coded in the same form as for a physical IPX network.
Routing Information Protocol is a protocol used to automatically propogate network routes in an IPX network. It is functionally simliar to the RIP used within the tcp/ip community.
NetWare Core Protocol is a networked filesystem protocol designed by the Novell Corporation for their NetWare(tm) product. NCP is functionally similar to the NFS used in the tcp/ip community.
Service Advertisement Protocol is a protocol designed by the Novell Corporation that is used to advertise network services in a NetWare(tm) environment.
This is a number that uniquely identifies a host in a physical network at the media access layer. Examples of this are Ethernet Addresses. An ethernet address is generally coded as six hexadecimal values seperated by colon characters eg. 00:60:8C:C3:3C:0F
The route is the path that your packets take through the network to reach their destination.