RINGbox

RINGbox is the brand name used for a family of lightweight hardware devices designed to operate within ring-based network architectures. The design emphasizes redundancy, modular expansion, and low power consumption, making it suitable for small offices, laboratories, and educational deployments.

Hardware typically features a compact, fanless enclosure, a system-on-a-chip processor, and a mix of Ethernet ports with a modular expansion header for additional nodes in a ring. Power is commonly supplied via USB-C, with optional PoE in some variants.

Software runs a Linux-based firmware with a modest set of network services, including routed and firewall capabilities, VPN support, and basic telemetry. The platform favors open-source components and allows community contributions and custom configurations.

In deployments, RINGbox devices are used to build resilient local networks where ring topology provides path redundancy. They are employed in education for hardware networking experiments, as edge routers for IoT projects, and in small workspaces seeking modular growth.

Development and governance of RINGbox have been informal in many cases, with various community-led builds and forks. No single official specification has been universally adopted, and documentation availability varies by vendor and release.

Related concepts include ring topology, mesh networks, and modular open hardware projects.