If you did any multiplayer PC gaming in the 90s and early 2000s, you likely knew of the IPX protocol as ‘the one that actually works’. IPX or Internetwork Packet Exchange was an extremely lightweight protocol, which as a result for the limits of computers of the age was a very good thing. A competitor to TCP/IP, it functions very well in small networks and didn’t require elements like DHCP and required little to no configuration, but does not scale well for applications like the Internet. As a result, it fell by the wayside and is now not a required protocol for most elements.