>> are ATA drives that plug into the ethernet.  Wouldn't it be nice to
>> take one home and plut it into your ethernet and go wild?  At least
>> from a user's perspective :-)
>
> In all fairness, those export CIFS.

enough. maybe not most efficient in the world but surely smarter than ATA 
over IP, and allows real SHARING files on this drive, what is not possible 
with raw devices only.

anyway - ATA over IP could be useful for userland programs like filesystem 
recovery or check. but no kernel support needed.