Internet server appliances come of age

The term "Internet appliance" - bandied about for years - promises easy setup and Web-based administration for performing well-defined tasks. With the exploding number of small offices and remote offices needing secure Internet services, and the continuing dearth of skilled technical support, the Internet appliance market looks good.

Can Sam the sales manager run the San Antonio branch office using an Internet server appliance? According to our tests, absolutely. Whether Sam gets help from headquarters' technical staff or from his teenaged daughter experienced in building a user Web site on AOL, an Internet appliance will give Sam all he needs for light to moderate Web, e-mail and file services.

Of the four Internet appliances we tested, Cobalt's Qube 3 offers the most administrative information, strongest fault tolerance and best Web e-mail for browser clients, along with the typical e-mail server software. Style helps too, as the cube look remains cool after three years. This combination earned Qube 3 the Network World Blue Ribbon award.

But Rebel NetWinder 3100 gets plenty of style points as well, and offers almost the same administrative depth. If your clients will benefit more from discussion forums running on the NetWinder server than from Web-based e-mail, NetWinder will serve you well. InstaGate EX2 and Celestix Aries Server Appliance work well but lack the extras mentioned for Qube 3 and NetWinder.

Toshiba's new Magnia SG10 hit the streets too late to be included in our tests, but it takes direct aim at Qube 3, with nearly identical features, disk capacity and price range. Two years ago IBM bought one of the early Internet appliance companies, Whistle InterJet, and has withdrawn the product from the market while it reconfigures the service bundle that includes the appliance as part of a long-term Internet services contract.

Sun/Cobalt Qube 3

Cobalt's Qube didn't invent the Internet server appliance niche, but it's done the most to popularize the market. The 7-by-7-by-8-inch purple cube shocked server traditionalists when the product was first shipped in early 1998. This third major revision, Qube 3, (at 8 by 8 by 7.5 inches) packs more punch and applied experience than any other current vendor. Now part of the Sun family, Cobalt also builds rack-mounted servers for ISPs and large corporations using the same desktop administration interface as Qube 3.

The high-end Qube 3 Professional Edition we tested includes a 450-MHz Intel-compatible processor, 128M bytes of RAM and two 20G-byte disk drives configured with RAID Level 1 fault tolerance. This unit supports up to 150 users and costs $2,100.

A small LCD window on the back of Qube 3 shows the unit's IP address when the machine is turned on. If there's an existing Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server visible on the network, Qube 3 picks up an address and displays it. From then on, all configuration and management goes through Cobalt's outstanding Server Desktop interface. Assigning a static IP address via the Web browser takes almost no time, and once the system reboots, all communications use the new address as expected.

Web pages are most easily transferred via a Server Message Block connection from a Windows workstation. FrontPage extensions are supported, but not by default. The Server Desktop doesn't provide direct access to the Web server log files, but the statistic screens offer six different instant reports, which should satisfy most situations. On the high-end unit, a Web cache service starts automatically upon installation. If Qube 3 sits between the Internet router and the rest of the network, all clients benefit from caching automatically. Otherwise, clients must be configured with the cache address.

While every appliance offers support for multiple mail server protocols, Qube 3 is the only one we tested that offers Web e-mail, called WebMail. With any browser, clients can use the complete e-mail application that ships with the product as well as any client-based Post Office Protocol 3 or Internet Message Access Protocol client software. Remote offices can configure Qube 3 to retrieve mail from corporate e-mail servers. This feature stops remote clients from hitting the corporate servers every few minutes looking for new messages, thereby conserving precious bandwidth and reducing the load on corporate servers.

Users log on to Qube 3 for access to Web mail, and public and private address books, and to see personal information, such as addresses, contact numbers, or a personal Web page. Without supervisory help, users can manage almost everything about their accounts, including changing passwords.

When companies target their products at a nontechnical buyer, the importance of good documentation rises to the top. This is one area where Sun/Cobalt didn't quite make the grade. For example, Qube 3 ships with an external SCSI connector for adding storage, but Cobalt did not provide instructions on the feature in the documentation. Also missing was an index.

There are three things that elevate Cobalt toward the top of the appliance heap: the dual drives that provide fault tolerance, the useful Web mail feature, and an automatic query service that alerts system administrators that a patch is ready to download and install.

Cobalt also offers users room to grow. The entry-level Qube 3 has a 300-MHz CPU, 32M bytes of RAM and a 10G-byte hard drive for $1,149, but Sun/Cobalt also offers higher-end features on Qube's big rack-mounted unit we tested. Anyone, including a minimally PC-abled nontechnical user, can install, configure and derive much happiness from Qube 3. If the user's requirements expand, there's an entire Cobalt family of products waiting.

Rebel NetWinder 3100

Rebel's NetWinder 3100 builds on the company's earlier OfficeServer with the unusual addition of the Transmeta Crusoe processor. The Crusoe's low power requirements pushes the NetWinder power down to five watts when asleep, with a typical rating of 14 watts when supporting a light to moderate user load and Web page traffic. The power savings isn't a huge deal today with the single-server configuration, but Rebel promises a future upgrade of its rack-mount system that runs on the new CPU. With 80 servers in a rack, all using a maximum of 19 watts, that would save a lot of power over traditional servers.

The system we tested has a 533-MHz processor, 128M bytes of RAM and a 10G-byte disk, and retails for $1,795. Rebel's top-end model includes the same processor with 256M bytes of RAM and a 20G-byte hard disk for $2,295.

Of the four appliances we tested, only the NetWinder lacks some method of displaying the IP address when it's first fired up. Using the popular local private address range of 192.168.1.0-254 (Internet routers ignore this address range), the NetWinder wakes up as IP address 192.168.1.1. Because that's commonly used for the router address on a private network, adjustments must be made quickly. We turned off the lab router before starting the NetWinder to avoid the potential conflict, but less-technical users could be surprised by the IP address conflict. The NetWinder checked around, located other DNS servers active on the network, and suggested an address for itself that didn't conflict with active network nodes.

If a system administrator gets confused, help comes with a single click. The user and administrator services pages have a help button, something Qube 3 lacks. With this single click and the help of context-specific help, a portion of the total online manual appeared in a smaller browser window.

RebelCache, NetWinder's term for the standard proxy cache service, is based on Squid caching technology. Not only do local users gain advantage of the cache from one NetWinder, but the cache hierarchy controls also let the NetWinder exchange cache information with peers or higher-level cache systems.

Three features of NetWinder deserve special mention. First, public and private discussion areas come standard with the system.

A system administrator must define or delete forums, but otherwise the discussion groups work like any other threaded discussion service. Replies can be sent via e-mail as well as on the forum. The public discussions require a logon and a few details about the end user, but private discussions accept any system-defined user.

Another handy feature, especially for paper lovers, is the inclusion of Ghostscript, a Linux printing utility. We configured an old Hewlett-Packard LaserJet IIp in the system and made it available for Macintosh clients. It worked great, as Ghostcript managed the PostScript-to-HP printer language conversion.

Third, where Qube 3 includes a SCSI connector for external drives, NetWinder lets you mount external file systems. Unix, Windows and local file systems are supported, making the disk space on NetWinder nearly unlimited.

NetWinder and Qube 3 include firewall software for security, but NetWinder offers slightly better default settings. It displays all traffic coming into and going out of the network, and it includes bold listings of what traffic is allowed.

Both manuals try to explain firewall configuration, but both also warn that settings work best when done by an experienced hand.

NetWinder ships with administrator and end-user manuals. The administrator manual sports an index but is shorter than the Qube 3 manual. The user manual explains how users handle their profiles, e-mail, connection to the discussion areas and ways to create their own Web pages.

InstaGate EX2

Unlike the other three appliances, eSoft's InstaGate EX2 must reside between the internal network where your clients are and the link to the outside, such as a router or broadband modem. The others recommend this configuration because it guarantees the appliance can work as a firewall, filter and Web cache, but they also can sit anywhere on the network like any other server. An eSoft spokesman says the ability to sit anywhere on the network, rather than only between the internal network and the Internet connection, will be added soon.

ESoft may insist on placing InstaGate EX2 between your network and the Internet partly because the product line leans heavily toward security, with its own high-end firewall and optional integration with Check Point Firewall-1 products. InstaGate EX2 supports Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol and IP Security for VPN configuration. Certain features, such as the public Web server, SiteFilter (a URL-blocking feature and antivirus filter for e-mail attachments) and the Firewall Policy Manager must be downloaded from eSoft's Web site through its SoftPak Director feature. Not quite as automatic as Cobalt's Qube 3 automatic update, but eSoft provides a list of installed software and two-click updates (one click to download, one click to install).

Each user gets a personal Web page, and an internal Web server is included in the box. Adding the users' pages to the public Web site takes some searching because you have to locate the correct directory.

Using FTP and the directory structure won't work, since nowhere does InstaGate (or most other appliances) tell you the actual default directory for Web files. The only joy for Web developers comes in transferring files via Windows Explorer after making a connection to the server with Network Neighborhood. That's not a big deal, but it's frustrating until you figure out how file storage is set up.

InstaGate EX2 does a good job of profiling system information. The Alerts and Reports heading on the administrative browser page offers a level of detail unmatched by any other appliance. You can't get a log file dump, but you can come close. Keeping headquarters up to date requires no work whatsoever because each night you can e-mail an automated report containing many details to as many people as you wish.

Help comes from a large electronic file, sensitive to the user or administrative screen open at the time. The only other manual included contains installation information.

Users won't see any of the bells and whistles of InstaGate EX2 because they're all saved for administrators. But users will benefit, perhaps, by a more-informed administrator. For example, InstaGate EX2 is the only system that provides any type of print queue management.

Celestix Aries Server Appliance

The toaster-sized Celestix includes the best setup interface of any Internet appliance we've tested. A card-sized LCD panel contains all the configuration screens necessary to start Celestix on the road to controlling your network.

Large enough to display four lines of text with navigation arrows and headings above and below, the Celestix LCD screen controls each critical start-up setting. Like NetWinder, Celestix starts with an IP address of 192.168.1.1, but informs you in bright pixels on the front of the machine, and offers an easy way to change that address. The IP addresses for primary and secondary Ethernet ports can be set through the LCD screen, you can enable the DHCP server here, and most other services can be started or stopped from the front panel. The four surrounding navigation keys provide an easy trip through what could become a menu maze, but it's laid out well enough that everything works.

While Qube 3 may be slightly administration-heavy, the Celestix appliance follows the "no news is good news' mantra. Too little information is shown, and no system information screens can be found. Only the most rudimentary file controls are provided (making files Read-Only or restrict access, for example). The user control screens don't offer ways to restrict user access to parts of the server hard drive. Unlike other systems, users can't be gathered into groups for easier management.

A basic firewall comes standard, but it's far more limited than the other firewalls in the range of traffic controlled and management. Proxy caching support must come from an ISP; the Celestix appliance doesn't directly provide caching for clients. Basic e-mail comes with the package, although Web client e-mail activity reports aren't included.

As the least expensive system ($1,000), Celestix offers some of the most advanced connection features. Its front sports an infrared port underneath the LCD panel, includes two PCMCIA slots, and ships with drivers for 802.11 wireless devices that plug into PC Card slots. The feature list doesn't include anything beyond the basics, but the basics work as advertised.

As Internet servers and services become as mandatory for small companies as they have for large corporations, the server appliance market will explode. This much power and control never came in such a stylish or user-friendly package before. For small and midsize companies, and corporate departments that need servers, these appliances do a great job hitting that 80/20 mark: 20% of the cost and complexity gives you 80% of all the features you need.

Related links

Gaskin is a freelance writer and author of Mastering NetWare 5.1. He can be reached at james@gaskin.com.

Global Test Alliance

Gaskin is also a member of the Network World Global Test Alliance, a cooperative of the premier reviewers in the network industry, each bringing to bear years of practical experience on every review. For more Test Alliance information, including what it takes to become a member, go to www.nwfusion.com/alliance.

How we did it
Our testing methods explained.

Network World on Web Acceleration
Sign up for our free e-mail newsletter.

Breaking Web-acceleration news