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Discussion on: A Tiny Network Boot (PXE) Server in JavaScript

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ender_minyard profile image
ender minyard

Hm, this is a bit abstract. Can you explain the difference between PXE and "normal" servers like I'm five?

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ara225 profile image
Anna Aitchison

I'll try Basically, PXE servers are made up of two pretty much independent and normal parts: a DHCP server, and a TFTP server.

The thing that combines them into a PXE server is that the DHCP server is configured to give out the TFTP server's details. When a client PC is told to boot from the network, it gets a DHCP address, uses the information provided by the DHCP server to download a boot file from the TFTP server, load it into memory and boot from it. In other circumstances, this information is ignored