5.4 Network connection

One of the best part of the Debian installer is that it can be network centric. This means the installer can pull the base operating system over a network connection from one of Debian's mirrors. This significantly reduces the necessary size for the installer media, while providing the flexibility to update the base operating system.

The installer attempts to use DHCP (dynamic host configuration protocol) to get the machine connected. Even though most servers need to have static IP addresses, it is possible to set up the DHCP server to map specific MAC (media access code) addresses to specific IP addresses.