It is usually associated with the client-server operating system Novell NetWare which originally supported primarily MS-DOS client stations, but later support for other platforms such as Microsoft Windows, the classic Mac OS, Linux, Windows NT, Mac OS X, and various flavors of Unix was added.
[1] The NCP is used to access file, print, directory, clock synchronization, messaging, remote command execution and other network service functions.
It originally took advantage of an easy network configuration and small memory footprint of the IPX/SPX protocol stack.
For NCP operation in IPX/SPX networks the bare IPX protocol was used with Packet Type field set to 17.
The Data field starts with NCP Function number octet which distinguishes individual services.