4 ms·
In the early 90s IPX/SPX was more common for LANs than the IP stack. It required much less configuration. Managing IP addresses in the days before DHCP was a ha
by jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
In the early 90s IPX/SPX was more common for LANs than the IP stack. It required much less configuration. Managing IP addresses in the days before DHCP was a hassle, while IPX just used MAC addresses directly. It also was just a simpler protocol. This was in the days of DOS where the driver had to run as a TSR the lower 640KiB memory area, so the driver size mattered.
In the later 90s IP pushed it out, partly due to Novel Netware fading away, and partly because IPX didn't scale to large networks the way IP can.
- bennysonething 4y agoGreat response, thank you :) Googled tsr, terminate and stay resident if anyone else is reading this.
- bennysonething 4y agoOne other question, if a dos game used TCP/ip, would the developer have to write their own ip stack? Presumably dos didn't provide any of this?
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y agoYeah, IP wasn't batteries included in the OS until later. I believe there were a variety of library venders but honestly don't know for certain.
- bennysonething 4y agoThanks