Home Server

A home server is a server located in a private residence providing services to other devices inside and/or outside the household through a home network and/or the Internet. Such services may include file and/or printer serving, media center serving, web serving, web caching, account authentication and backup services. Because of the relatively low number of computers on a typical home network, a home server commonly does not require significant computing power. Often, users reuse older systems, and home servers with specifications as low as 1 GHz CPU and 256 MB of RAM can be used. Large, preferably fast hard drives (ATA-100 or SATA) and a network interface card are usually all the hardware required for home file serving. An uninterruptible power supply is recommended in case of power outages that can possibly corrupt data.