: Never use 100M NICs; they are too slow for modern diskless environments.
| Layer | Optimization | Goal | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | | 10Gbps Server Uplink | Eliminate throughput bottleneck at the source. | | Switch | Enable PortFast | Prevent PXE boot timeouts during link negotiation. | | Switch | Disable Flow Control | Prevent head-of-line blocking during high traffic. | | Server | RAM Caching (Image Cache) | Serve OS files from RAM, not HDD/SSD. | | Server | Intel Server NICs | Utilize hardware offloading to free CPU resources. | | Software | Disable Superfetch | Stop random read IOPS during boot. | | Client | iPXE Upgrade | Faster initialization and handover to iSCSI. | ccboot network optimization