BeagleBone as LAN webserver for a media-heavy site

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1

Hi everyone,

I was hoping you could give me some advice on the BeagleBone boards.

For a home project, I’m looking for something that can run a webserver that would only ever serve 1 to 3 clients at a time. The website itself is a little bit heavy though - basically it will show the client pictures and videos that are stored in an SQL database and perform some extra functions.

I was lucky enough to borrow a BeagleBone Black from a friend, and do a quick check to serve a MP4 HD video file over LAN (HTML5 video). Seemed to work OK.

Unfortunately I do not have time to set up and try out the entire website (which also has some php server-side scripting going on, doing queries on the SQL database, fetching lots of thumbnails to preview media files, etc). On top of all that, the Bone would be running a (very simple) Python server application that listens on a socket and forwards HTTP requests to some USB device connected to it.

The video result was encouraging, but I have no clue what to expect performance-wise from the Bone when it’s confronted with all the stuff listed above. I understand it’s hard to say based on this brief explanation, but I was wondering whether you could do an educated guess: is this too much for the Beagle boards, or should they be able to handle this alright?

Thank you very much!

2

The only way you’re going to know is if you set it up and test. I am thinking if it can handle your HD video that it should do just fine.

3

Thanks for replying. I guess you’re right - I can never know for sure until I try.

Still, if there’s anyone out there who’s used the Black as a webserver and found it to be insufficient, I would be interested to know what it choked on for comparison.