> although the protocol was bootp instead of pxe Well, they used bootp followed by tftp, and so did most other UNIX workstations of that time period. DHCP is

> although the protocol was bootp instead of pxe Well, they used bootp followed by tftp, and so did most other UNIX workstations of that time period. DHCP is effectively a superset of bootp -- it uses the same UDP port. PXE is DHCP+tftp along with some specification of tftp paths, where the image is loaded in RAM, etc. Really the overall netboot mechanism is nearly identical as it was 25 years ago, just some protocol tweaks and a new acronym.