So recently, my brother has managed to get an old IPXNET server running that he found on github. We were able to use it so successfully play Master of Orion 2.

Now, I'm running the linux port from GOG and it installs 3 launchers of the game and 1 launcher for settings. I don't know but I would assume the windows and mac installers do the same. Of those, 1 is an IPX server another the client which leaves me wondering why does GOG have the installer set it up this way? I've modified the appropriate dosbox conf file to have just one launcher. Wouldn't it be easier for GOG to just have the installer ask for an IP(or address)that IPXNET would use and write that in by default, they could give away a free dosbox server program that anyone could run in the background as the IPXNET server(just whoever is hosting the game would run this before they started playing). It would work for any game that uses the IPXNET as a workaround.

As a side note, I found that with Master of Orion 2 I had to alter the configuration from the installer default because it used port 1337 as per the start.sh script. So it did take some tinkering to work.

I just wonder if there isn't a better to make use IPXNET tunneling, or at least more intuitive?

As a bit of a primer, here's a runthough of the DOSbox configuration file.

And here's the DOSbox wiki.

I wish you the best in your endeavors, but I've never done networking.