1. A system for accelerating network data requests, comprising: a processor communicatively coupled to a network controller; the network controller having access to non-volatile memory (NVM) for storing a plurality of operating system boot files, wherein the network controller is configured to selectively retrieve operating system boot files from a network accessible storage (NAS) device and the non-volatile memory at boot time to boot an operating system on the processor; and the network controller further comprising a pattern matching unit configured to identify requests to the network accessible storage to retrieve boot files necessary to boot the operating system, and to selectively retrieve requested boot files from the non-volatile memory instead of the network accessible storage when the requested boot files are identified as having been stored in the non-volatile memory, and to retrieve the requested boot files from the network accessible storage device when the requested boot files are not present in the non-volatile memory.