A server farm is the name given to the room of computers used by a company when one isn’t enough. They might each have different jobs or are used to spread the load for one job across several computers.

Of course there isn’t much point having a server farm at home (not even in my wildest techie dreams). But what about the other way round with one server for a group of neighbours? Barring video, I struggle to fill even the modest hard drive in my home server and it irks me to have space sitting unused. I suspect the needs of my immediate neighbours are modest enough that it wouldn’t break the server to share it with them.

Keeping it local makes connections easier. Living in a terrace, even wires are a possibility.

I have a feeling that the biggest problem here is the internet connection; bringing everybody onto the same network would involve sharing the same ISP. Still there might be ways round that. I’d love to hear them if more network minded people read this.

Has anyone ever done this? Or is the risk from the teenage computer expert next door breaking into your documents too great?