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I'm experimenting on and off with PXE network booting. In my experience, TFTP is really slow (ancient UDP based protocol) and I'd like to do away with it. Unfo

I'm experimenting on and off with PXE network booting. In my experience, TFTP is really slow (ancient UDP based protocol) and I'd like to do away with it. Unfortunately TFTP is still required to load something like iPXE to load the actual OS Kernel over HTTP, assuming iPXE isn't part of the NIC firmware or can't be configured to do so. Turns out that downloading over HTTP is just as slow (few MB/s) when using iPXE so I'm not sure what I'm gaining. Ideally HTTP boot is possible through the UEFI bios but it seems that this is common on servers, but not on clients? My HP 1L PCs don't have an option to boot over HTTP directly.

RulerOf 2y ago
> Turns out that downloading over HTTP is just as slow (few MB/s) when using iPXE so I'm not sure what I'm gaining. iPXE should be able to max out any gigabit NIC that has a decent driver. If you're using a BIOS UNDI driver (undionly.kpxe) or EFI SNP (snp.efi/snponly.efi) you may be experiencing the misery of a crummy driver supplied by the built-in PXE ROM. If your NIC is supported, try using the bin/ipxe.pxe or bin/ipxe.efi build targets[1] and chainload that instead. If they work at all, it'll mean you've got a NIC with a native iPXE driver, and using that driver may speed things up. Alternatively, the opposite may also be true. Some of the drivers aren't great, and UNDI/SNP may perform better. If you're already using those builds, try it the other way around. [1]: https://ipxe.org/appnote/buildtargets https://ipxe.org/appnote/buildtargets
- louwrentius 2y ago
  Thanks for the tips, I'll look into this some more.