Expand Networks - Network Appliance

[Topcat]

I got a couple of these a few weeks ago for repair. Judging by the connectors on them, I'd say they're routers of some kind. Interestingly enough, they have standard PC mainboards in them (Aopen P3 boards), of course ailing from the bad cap plague.

The main reason I'm posting this, is because of the unique nature of them to begin with. I've never seen a router using standard PC boards like these. Hell, when I recapped them, I tested them like I do any other mainboard, there's nothing proprietary or special about them. However, the rest of their innards are definitely proprietary to the appliance. If anyone else has one thats acting up, there's a record of what the issue may be, and keep them from being pitched in the dumpster.









After recapping






These bad boys were a bear to disassemble in order to get the mainboard out, so anyone who tries this themselves is in for a treat if they aren't patient or experienced.... There seemed to be an endless supply of screws and brackets when I was done taking it apart.......

[willawake]

Re: Expand Networks - Network Appliance

Expand's Accelerators take application traffic management to the next level by reducing WAN costs and improving application performance. Expand Network's Accelerators are a class apart from other WAN optimization and traffic management solutions.

In addition to bandwidth expansion capabilities, the Accelerators provide a rich set of features that improve application response times and provide layer 7 visibility and control tools that enable network managers to align network resources with business priorities. This unique combination of features is achieved through next-generation WAN compression, application-specific acceleration, Layer 7 QoS capabilities and sophisticated monitoring and reporting. Nowhere else will you find such an intelligent WAN optimization device.

oh shit i have a headache now.............

http://www.expand.com/product/Features.html

anyway it makes your wan traffic much more efficient and those devices cost around $10.000 so i hope you charged a fair amount.

its pretty common to have a pc in a 1u box running some software like dood's iprisms

[Per Hansson]

Re: Expand Networks - Network Appliance

Damn nice system!

I've been thinking of building and selling NAS servers myself... built in a similar way...

Nice Intel nics... hmm, that is a really cool system really... What is it's model number?

[willawake]

Re: Expand Networks - Network Appliance

here's a look inside the google mini search appliance which is infact a gigabyte 1u server. http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2523

2 x expand 2800 are going on ebay for $400
http://cgi.ebay.com/Expand-Networks-...QQcmdZViewItem

says retail is $1500 each
guess i got the price for a higher model

[Chris1992]

Re: Expand Networks - Network Appliance

interesting. what procs were installed and did they have the standard aOpen bios?

[Topcat]

Re: Expand Networks - Network Appliance

interesting. what procs were installed and did they have the standard aOpen bios?

One was a Cellie (forgot the speed), and the other was a P3 1GHz I think. They used the stock Aopen BIOS as far as I could tell, on POST, they had the Aopen splash. I'd have to dump the BIOS and pick it apart with cbrom or modbin to see if they had modded it any.