Networking Guide
Chapter 4, Administering SCO IPX/SPX

Service advertising

Service advertising

Servers on a NetWare network advertise their services and IPX addresses with the Service Advertising Protocol (SAP). The information that these servers broadcast is not used directly by clients but, instead, is collected by a SAP agent within each NetWare router on the server's segment. The SAP agents store this information in a Server information table and, if they reside within a server, in their server's bindery. The clients can then contact the nearest SAP agent or file server for server information.

The SAP broadcasts that servers perform are local broadcasts and, therefore, only received by SAP agents on their connected segments. Consequently, SAP agents periodically broadcast their server information so that all SAP agents on the network have information about all servers that are active on the network -- this is the same broadcast method used by routers to distribute and exchange network number (RIP) information.