Fremont, Calif. -- Ateon Networks Inc. announced that it was granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office a patent for “Providing Remote Storage for an Internet Appliance” on March 21, 2000. The three-month old Internet appliance company also released on Monday a Linux-based diskless server appliance, IA-2020, which incorporated the new patent in a DSL/Cable router and e-mail server without… relying on an internal hard disk drive.

The new patent can be incorporated into any network or Internet appliance as with the current e-mail server. It can also be integrated with future Internet enabled home appliances such as a toaster, refrigerator, washer or TV, which may require a remote storage residing on a home gateway server.

Ateon Networks focuses its market on the small and mid-sized business (SMB). It expects to compete directly with some of the industry heavyweights such as Cobalt Networks and Intel InBusiness Networking. In addition to IA-2020, Ateon plans to release a series of diskless server appliances, including Network Attached Storage (NAS) and Video Streaming server.

“The full potential of a Linux-based server appliance has not been exploited until now. The launch of IA-2020 brings several key aspects of this equation together for the first time, including embedded Linux, solid state disk and remote storage for the Internet appliances,” said Ben Chen, CEO of Ateon Networks. “The capability to harness the Linux server completely under the flash ROM makes it possible for Ateon to introduce other seemingly different diskless server appliances,” continued Chen, “including Video Streaming server and WAP gateway in a very short time frame.”

The diskless Linux-based server appliances from Ateon are expected to be more reliable and affordable than their counterparts built with magnetic hard disk drives. The IA-2020 broadband E-mail server/router appliance is priced at $775, supporting 250 users.

 
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