Android Fastboot over Ethernet to flash boot image

Question

I have connected my host with an Android device over ethernet. I have an android device connected via ethernet cable to a router and a Host (linux-Ubuntu) connected to the same router.

Host Ip is : 
eth1 : inet addr : 192.168.101.102 mask : 255.255.255.0

Device Ip(configured this IP static not DHCP) :

   192.168.101.105 
Network Prefix Length : 24
Default Gateway : 192.168.0.1

I am able to ping the device from the host in normal mode. But when I enter into the fastboot mode via Power + Volume Down OR adb reboot bootloader: I am neither able to ping the device nor able to flash the device using fastboot -t flash boot

Device ethernet interface name is eth0 while the Host interface name is eth1.Does it matter?

How can I achieve this or is it not possible?

Answer 1

Fastboot is a development tool used for receiving and flashing system images you have just compiled yourself from source

But I'm not aware that it has any network capability by default. Normally networking on an android device operates by way of a Linux Kernel, and fastboot is a sort of 2nd-stage bootloader with minimal UI - no Linux Kernel is running when you are in fastboot mode. Fastboot typically has code to operate the USB interface, read some buttons, and paint the screen, but that's all that is normally needed in the way of off-board I/O on a typical phone/tablet.

It would certainly be possible to adapt something like U-Boot as a more capable flashing tool which includes its own networking stack, provided that you have all of the necessary hardware documentation for operating the processor, enabling necessary peripherals (including RAM?), networking, and writing to flash. There's the question of where you could store this, but the recovery partition might be a possibility.

Another option could be to modify the recovery partition - a miniature linux system with kernel and userland of its own - to receive network payloads and flash the main system and/or data partitions, rather than merely interpret OTA payloads previously downloaded and stored by the full running system.