Design Issues in a Bare PC Web Server

We present a bare PC Web server design that runs on any Intel 386 based PC without any hard disk and other supporting software. This server design is based on simplicity and minimal functionality. We identify design issues related to such server and provide our preliminary performance measurements in comparison with IIS and Apache servers. We have found that our Web server performs comparable to commercial servers and it can be enhanced to perform even better when it is optimized for certain design factors. This work also has motivated us to pursue further research in building bare PC Web servers that can be scalable to run large applications. In addition, as the Web server is self-contained with all necessary code, it inherently provides ubiquity on the network, which allows for moving the server dynamically on the network during emergency and catastrophic situations. Furthermore, bare PC software may also provide alternate ways of building secure systems for critical applications.