Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) Question:

External Data Representation is a method of encoding data within an RPC message, used to ensure that the data is notsystem-dependent.

BOOTP helps a diskless workstation boot. How does it get a message to the network looking for its IP address and the location of its operating system boot files?

BOOTP sends a UDP message with a sub network broadcast address and waits for a reply from a server that gives it the IP address. The same message might contain the name of the machine that has the boot files on it. If the boot image location is not specified, the workstation sends another UDP message to query the server.