A system and method to quickly and efficiently transfer data over a network to a processing system during a pre-boot runtime of the processing system. During a pre-boot runtime of the processing system, a plurality of data packets is received via a network. Each of the plurality of data packets contains one of a corresponding plurality of data segments. The plurality of data packets are parsed using a network protocol stack to extract the plurality of data segments during the pre-boot runtime. A portion of the network protocol stack is executed in a hardware entity of the processing system. The plurality of data segments is transferred into system memory of the processing system during the pre-boot runtime.