IPX Translation Rules

To determine whether IPX translation should be enabled or disabled on a GS2000 line card, you must understand the IPX translation rules:

If... And... Then...
The line card receives  a Raw Ethernet frame from an Ethernet LAN IPX translation is enabled on the line card The Raw Ethernet frames are translated and are output to the FDDI backbone as SNAP frames.
The line card receives a Raw Ethernet frame from an Ethernet LAN IPX translation is disabled on the line card The Raw Ethernet frames are not translated and are output to the FDDI backbone as Raw Ethernet frames.
The line card receives a SNAP frame from an FDDI backbone IPX translation is enabled on the line card The SNAP frames are translated and are output to the Ethernet LAN as Raw Ethernet frames.
The line card receives a SNAP frame from an FDDI backbone IPX translation is disabled on the line card The SNAP frames are not translated to the Raw Ethernet frame type and are output to the Ethernet LAN as SNAP frames.

Note:  IPX translation incurs extra overhead when forwarding frames.  If possible, reconfigure the Ethernet-attached nodes in this scenario to use SNAP encapsulation so that IPX translation is not needed. 

If all the nodes in the network number use raw encapsulation, then IPX translation is not needed because Raw frames can be set over the FDDI network.