Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Tue 11th Jan 2005 12:33 UTC
FreeBSD In two posts on BSD News pointing at e-mails from Robert Watson, a FreeBSD Core Team Developer, presenting both recent accomplishments relating to IPX/SPX and the general status of SMPng and the network stack are discussed.
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goog links
by csabimano on Tue 11th Jan 2005 13:18 UTC

Although I'm not surprised that the news itself didn't create that much of an excitement (who uses ipx/spx nowdays?), the links are interesting. Also, a lot more exciting things are happening in FreeBSD right now.

It looks like some perfomance tuning will be trailing down from CURRENT in the very near future:
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-performance/2005-January...
The USB mailing list seems quite busy, so I expect improvements in ehci (currently it's still quite buggy on -STABLE). Support for more tv-cards (ATIallinwonder). And so on... ;)

wow
by Anonymous on Tue 11th Jan 2005 14:16 UTC

I submitted this over a week ago... I guess the people scanning the articles need a little help...

Novell
by tobaccofarm on Tue 11th Jan 2005 14:25 UTC

who uses ipx/spx nowdays

Older Novell networks,as of version 5.x there's a tcp/ip stack.

Not in FreeBSD 5.x yet, but it's in 6.x..
by bsdrocks on Tue 11th Jan 2005 18:44 UTC

Robert Watson announces IPX/SPX now MPSAFE on FreeBSD 5.x

It should be change to 6.x. Robert Watson said, 'I've set of an MFC after of 2-4 weeks for various elements of the above changes.' It means it will be in FreeBSD 5.x about 2-4 weeks.

IPX/SPX is nice to use on a LAN, as you don't have to worry about leaking info to the outside world (IPX/SPX is non-routable and won't leave your LAN without putting a lot of effort into it). It's also fairly fast when compared to TCP/IP for LAN traffic, and is much nicer to use for LAN gaming. Too bad not a lot (if any) games comes with IPX/SPX support anymore.

Up until last year, I used to use IPX/SPX on all the home networks I admin'd (mine, mom's, aunt's, cousin's), and used a gateway to allow Internet access. Much more secure than have TCP/IP on every device on the LAN.

IPX/SPX support in Windows has been dwindling, and Unix support is too, making it almost not worth the effort.