Dell/Wyze N06D Thin Client

Dell/Wyze N06D Thin Client

The world of thin clients

This computer falls under the category named ‘thin clients’. This is not a novelty, as its concept dates back to the dumb-terminal era. Those terminals were not able to operate without a mainframe, or some kind of master server. Thin clients are the modern incarnation of dumb-terminals. These are small, low-power, low-value and low-maintenance computers deployed in offices and public spaces where they can get stolen or destroyed without leaking/losing any data. Most deployment uses a slimed-down version of Windows, and connects to a powerful central server through remote desktop. One of the pioneers of the modern thin clients was Sun, with its Sun Ray offering. Those machines were based around the MicroSPARC architecutre. On the x86 side, the low-powered devices were using CPUs like AMD Geode, or Via/Cyrix cores. One of the most popular brand was WYSE. Nowadays, thin clients are regular X86_64 PC, but using low-spec CPUs. Intel Atom and Intel Celeron are often the primary choice in this space, due to their low cost and low power consumption. They also uses laptop RAM and small SSDs. You know what they also have in common with PCs? USB ports, UEFI and networking.

The revelation!

My network was using Traefik installed on Truenas but it came with some limitation. Being unable to proxy services hosted outside of Truenas was one of them. With that on mind, I was looking for a replacement. I had two options, run a VM on the Truenas server, or having a dedicated machine for a proxy. One of the other concern I had with having a proxy on my ‘data’ server was having everything at the same place. So the VM option was quickly rejected, leaving the option of running a dedicated machine. Of course, what comes to mind in this situation is an SBC like a Raspberry Pi. Problem, I had none available for this. I looked at buying another one. THe RPi 5 was not released yet, and the RPi 4 was still selling for big price (still affected by low stock). This is when I discovered the world of thin clients. Upgradable, x86 machines, often fanless and cheap. Very very cheap. I got the Dell N06D for 10 canadian dollars, way less than the 80$+ for a RPi4! Yes it’s bigger than a Raspberry Pi, yes it does not have any GPIO pins, but since it’s a regular x86 PC, it means it’s really easy and conveniant to find an operating system for it.

Current use

It is now used as a proxy for my entire network. It handles SSL with Let’s Encrypt through Nginx Proxy Manager and double down as a PiHole server. The CPU is barely used, RAM usage stays under 2GB and stays at room temperature. I might add a Wireguard server on it, so I’ll be able to dedicate the Truenas server for data stuff. Before deploying PiHole on it, I was using the DNS server that comes with my Mikrotik router. While it was working, it was no fun to configure. So we ended up configuring the thin client as our DNS server.

Specs