Here's another variation on the stand-alone router card.
A 4-port router/firewall board with a hard disk interface. It would be
packaged in a drive shoebox with a power supply, but have multiple
high-speed Ethernet connectors on the back panel instead of a SCSI or USB
interface. Its mission would be to combine multiple server functions with a
firewall/router. Some possible services:
Web proxy
Print spooler for multiple dumb off-the-shelf print server boxes
that don't have disks or big buffers of their own
Local Debian mirror
Bittorrent server with low enough power requirements to be left on
full time
Household music or video server
Internet-facing web server
Incoming mail server with spam filtering and connect-time security
Application server for thin clients (small network)
DNS/DHCP server for hidden private domain
With EEPROM-resident firmware and a journaling file system for data,
it should be able to start up and shut down simply by turning power on and
off. If necessary, it could have a modest internal battery to power a
controlled shutdown on loss of power.
With socketed firmware and a non-erasable factory EPROM, it would
administered and configured entirely over the LAN, so it wouldn't need any
hardware for an operator interface. There would be no danger that an
upgrade mistake could make it unbootable, because the factory default EPROM
could always be plugged back in. In fact, it could be soldered to the board
and selected with a DIPswitch. That helps keep it simple, cheap, small, and
low-power. This is not a miniature desktop computer, it's a pure server.
It relies on desktop computers elsewhere on the LAN for anything that needs
an operator interface or removable I/O devices.
What would an open-design project bring to the party? A fully
documented design that third parties could put back into production, and
thus ensure long-term availability. The CPU horsepower requirements should
be modest enough to use a commodity processor, perhaps an open-design one.
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