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Network I/O Support
The Network Boot Firmware provides the capability to boot the
CPU through the ROM debugger using a network (local Ethernet
interface) as the boot device.
The booting process is executed in two distinct phases.
The various modules and the dependencies of these modules that
support the overall network boot function are described in the
following paragraphs.
Intel 82596 LAN Coprocessor Ethernet Driver
This driver manages/surrounds the Intel 82596 LAN Coprocessor.
Management is in the scope of the reception of packets, the
transmission of packets, receive buffer flushing, and interface
initialization.
This module ensures that the packaging and unpackaging of
Ethernet packets is done correctly in the Boot PROM.
UDP/IP Protocol Modules
The Internet Protocol (IP) is designed for use in interconnected
systems of packet-switched computer communication networks.
The Internet protocol provides for transmitting of blocks of data
called datagrams (hence User Datagram Protocol, or UDP) from
sources to destinations, where sources and destinations are hosts
identified by fixed length addresses.
The UDP/IP protocols are necessary for the TFTP and BOOTP
protocols; TFTP and BOOTP require a UDP/IP connection.
The first phase allows the diskless remote node to discover its
network identify and the name of the file to be booted.
The second phase has the diskless remote node reading the
boot file across the network into its memory.
Network I/O Support
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