Timothy
Parker Consulting Incorporated
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Rebel.com’s NetWinder Unless you’ve been ignoring the news for the last couple
of years you have probably heard of Rebel.com, the Ottawa-based company that has
tried to revolutionize the small server market with its NetWinder product.
A lot of Rebel.com’s fuss has come from its relationship with Corel,
from which it grew. Although Rebel.com makes many more products than the
NetWinder, it’s this product that the company has the most exposure with, and
for good reason. There are several
models of the NetWinder available depending on the target audience.
We reviewed the small business model called the OfficeServer. The NetWinder OfficeServer is a small device about the size
of a hardback book. It’s very light, making you almost believe it’s an empty
box. The front of the beige
attractive case has status lights, the top has a single button for power, and
the back has the ports for the device. There
is a parallel ports, two network ports (one for 10Base-T connection to an ISP or
router and one 10/100Base-T for the internal network), both keyboard and mouse
PS-2 style ports, a monitor video port, a serial input port for remote
connection, and a power socket for a wall-wart power supply. A small fan keeps
the unit cool (and quiet). The NetWinder OfficeServer can be laid down or placed
on end in a supplied stand. The heart of the NetWinder OfficeServer is a StrongARM CPU
running at 275MHz. The StrongARM is
a 32bit processor designed to run Linux. The aim of the NetWinder OfficeServer
is to provide small businesses with a plug-in and quick-configure network server
that can provide trouble-free e-mail and Internet services, as well as act as a
basic firewall to protect the internal networks. The NetWinder OfficeServer is supplied with a printed, spiral
bound manual that is a model of good writing and design, as well as softcopies
on a CD-ROM that can be printed or viewed online. The NetWinder OfficeServer itself has an
HTML version of the manual, too, giving you lots of options. Installing the NetWinder OfficeServer in a test network was
simple: connect the two Ethernet cables (one to a router for the ISP the other
to the internal network’s hub), plug in the unit, and turn it on. The unit is
so small and light is can sit almost anywhere: we ended up with it sitting next
to a workstation for easy monitoring. The bootup process is slow, taking several
minutes, and then the NetWinder OfficeServer tells you (yup, it speaks!) it is
ready. To configure the NetWinder OfficeServer, software is loaded
from a supplied CD-ROM onto any Windows machine. The software then runs out to find the NetWinder. There’s
no need to use the monitor, keyboard, and mouse ports unless you want to, as
everything can be done over the network, although you can do it from the
supplied ports if you wish. Using a browser as an interface the QuickStart
utility then lets you configure the unit in a few easy steps.
Essentially, you provide an IP address, configure the connection to your
ISP, and choose the services NetWinder OfficeServer will offer. You also need to
create user accounts for everyone who will use the NetWinder OfficeServer, done
using an HTML interface instead of the more clumsy utilities many Linux systems
rely on. If you are familiar with Linux or UNIX, there’s a lot
that you will recognize in the NetWinder OfficeServer interface.
If you’re not familiar with either of these operating systems at all,
don’t worry. The HTML interface
hides all the details from you and you will never have to worry about knowing
UNIX commands. The only really
important thing to remember is that the NetWinder OfficeServer has to be
shutdown properly, instead of just powered off. There’s a ton of services included with the NetWinder
OfficeServer. For Web servers, the
system is preconfigured and even includes a copy of Corel’s Web Designer
software for Windows systems. E-mail is simple to set up using POP or IMAP, and
can do most of the advanced features you would require such as forwarding and
filtering. If you want newsgroup
support like Usenet, but restricted to the local network, setting them use is
trivial with NetWinder OfficeServer’s discussion forum screens. A neat package
is InfoPlace, which is a document manager that allows you to post documents on
the server for review by others. A
database of the documents is maintained and searched by users. One of the many services NetWinder OfficeServer provides is
DHCP, which is useful for Windows networks that need dynamically assigned IP
addresses. After you set up the
range of IP addresses used by connecting machines, any DHCP client can use the
server. You can use the NetWinder OfficeServer as a traditional DNS and NIS
server, as well. Of course, there are all the usual TCP services like FTP, TFTP,
Telnet, and so on, all supported (and filterable as a firewall package). Xfree86
(a freeware X system) is included in the package. Virtual hosts are supported,
allowing multiple hosts with different IP addresses to be maintained inside the
single NetWinder OfficeServer box. Are there problems with the NetWinder OfficeServer? The operating system behaved superbly during my testing, and the only real concern I would have would be disk space. The NetWinder OfficeServer comes with either a 6 or 10GB hard drive, and if you’re hosting a lot of documents or Web pages, the disk may get overloaded. RAM is expandable from 32MB to 128MB so that should be fine. All in all, the NetWinder OfficeServer is a neat solution to a simple office server in a clever package. |
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tparker@tpci.com with
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