Abstract: A diskless PC network communication agent system includes a host, a network communication agent, a physical network connecting the network communication agent to the host, and diskless PCs connected to the network communication agent. The network communication agent has network packet filtering and transferring functions so that a virtual private network is established between the network communication agent and the diskless PCs for enabling each diskless PC to use a preboot execution environment communication protocol to catch dynamic host configuration protocol information, to start up network bootstrap, and to request the host for the services of remote installation, boot and access to virtual disk.

Abstract: A distributive cache accessing device for accelerating booting remote diskless computers mounted in a diskless computer equipped with WAN-bootable hardware, such as an iSCSI host bus adapter (HBA), allows to access data required to boot the diskless computers or run application programs thereon from an iSCSI target or other diskless computers having the distributive cache accessing device via a network. The retrieved iSCSI data blocks are temporarily stored in the local distributive cache accessing device. If any other diskless computer requests for the iSCSI data blocks, the temporarily stored iSCSI data blocks can be accessible to the diskless computer. Given installation of a large number of diskless computers, the network traffic of the iSCSI target is alleviated, and booting remote diskless computer is accelerated.

Abstract: A method and an apparatus are provided to remote boot a diskiess computer on a WAN. The remote boot apparatus is constructed as an embedded interface in the computer. The remote boot apparatus has a bi-directional buffer, a central processor, a network interface, a boot ROM and ail interface core routine. The remote boot apparatus intercepts a normal disk read of an MBR issued by a system BIOS of a local computer, and then redirects the disk instruction in a form of TCP/IP packet to a remote boot server to read a corresponding file block from a location of the remote boot server. After the file block is received and confirmed by the computer, the received file block is unpacked and supplied to boot the computer.