I will have to disagree that windows is secure if properly locked down.

IPX is native to Novell and not the windows environment. IPX needs to be added to windows for it to support it. Even Novell has been moving away from it in favor of IP. IPX does have some advantages over IP though.

If you want some good reading, look at the piggyback timer, this is just one reason why windows has such poor networking performance. You might also want to look and see what the other OS's do as well.