Open Issues and Known Problems

Try as one might, occassionally bugs are present in released software. The major outstanding problems of which we are aware are noted below.

IPX-related Kernel Bugs

FARGOS/VISTA supports IPX/SPX as a transport scheme on platforms capable of handling the IPX protocol stack. Unfortunately, our (FARGOS Development, LLC) testing against various platforms has lead us to conclude that reliable operation of IPX is rare and correct inter-platform SPX support is a fantasy. Of much more concern is that many of the kernels lockup/freeze/panic when an unexpected SPX packet is received. In other words, an SPX packet can act as a packet-of-death. Consequently, we have grave misgivings about enabling the use of IPX: it is far too easy to accidentally (or intentionally) lay waste to a population of machines by sending a malformed/unanticpated packet.

As of 2019, we would hope use of this protocol has finally been sunset and intend to drop support in a subsequent release.