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As I know it is possible to boot up some bootable images (like Linux, Clonezilla, management applications and others) over a PXE (Preboot Execution Environment) server with an Ethernet device (802.3).

Can the same thing be done with an Ethernet WiFi (802.11) device? I tested with my notebook but my BIOS appears to not enable booting from WiFi devices. Is it possible with some specific WiFi cards and/or a specific BIOS?

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I never heard of it, but its theoretically possible... – soandos Jul 15 '11 at 13:04
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One of the main challenges is going to be convincing the bios to activate the wireless NIC and getting it to join your WLAN, before broadcasting the "I'm ready to boot!" signal. I'm unaware of any bios that supports that kind of wireless NIC control. – Babu Jul 15 '11 at 13:29
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5 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

At least one vendor has solved this, but you're not likely to be able to do with with mix-and-match motherboards and Wi-Fi adaptors at this time.

You can boot MacBook Airs via Wi-Fi, as long as another machine on the network is sharing a Mac OS X install DVD via Mac OS X's DVD sharing feature. Since MBA's don't necessarily come with an optical drive or Ethernet adaptor, this can be the only way for some users to do a clean OS install.

Apple has built drivers for those Wi-Fi chipsets, as well as a UI for joining a Wi-Fi network, into the EFI bootROM on those models.

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Really nice, good answear, thank you very much for explain. – Diogo Jul 15 '11 at 17:34
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up vote 3 down vote

If your WLAN adapter doesn't support PXE, then no, you can't do PXE over wireless.

If your laptop has an Ethernet adapter, however, you can connect it to a wireless access point that can function as a bridge (or a dedicated wireless bridge). I've tried it myself, but it was too slow, I'd rather just move the laptop near an Ethernet switch/router.

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I enjoyed your solution, liking or not, its a way to boot over Wifi. +1 – Diogo Jul 15 '11 at 17:18
One of our robots boots over long-range 900Mhz WLAN using this exact technique. – Tim Williscroft Jul 20 '11 at 6:16
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up vote 1 down vote

It looks like the guys over at Etherboot have provisional support for booting off a Wifi card. only a couple of cards supported, but you may be lucky...

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up vote 0 down vote

There are some wireless network cards that recieve power even in an "off" state which can use "Wake-on-WLAN" but as for PXE boot over wireless I think, while interesting, would be a) very slow (compared to ethernet) and b) only preferable for very small distro enviroments.

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up vote -1 down vote

why would a wireless N network be slower booting than a 10Mbps ethernet ??? If GigE then yes wireless would be slower.

Industry testing has shown that enterprise 802.11n APs can achieve 150+ Mbps aggregate throughput under real world test conditions (see Cisco/Intel test and Network World test). However, it is not uncommon for 15 or more users to associate with the same AP. Therefore the average throughput per user will vary as the number of users per AP varies.

So a wireless N boot given some forethought and understanding of limits of users etc. should at least equal or beat 10Mbps ethernet up until the number of users sharing the wifi access point are enough to reduce throughput, increase latency etc.

My guess is that for 10-12 users the wifi should be ok. If you needed more then you'd need to setup separate access points using different channels/frequencies.

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