So.... it is becoming more of a question of why rather than how

As regards to the how...

Bandwidth - I am about 8 months away from upgrading my broadband (waiting for a Sky contract to end). My next provider will be Virgin, who offer 100Mbps connection. Now I know its still "upto" but if you take a look at their actual speeds Vs advertised they are about the same. The upload is 5Mbps for the 50Mbps broadband, so I guess you'd get in the range of 6-8Mbps upload for the 100Mbps package. BTW: their average customer speed for 50Mbps package is 49.84Mbps nice! There is also nothing in the T&Cs as regards to caps or connections, so hosting a mirror shouldn't be an issue.

Hardware - Space is not an issue, as I am currently upgrading my storage to a 4-bay NAS (with 4 x 3TB Seagates), overkill I know, but I collect digital media like its going out of fashion! So I have 4 x 1 TB old WD HDDs kicking about, which can be easily fitted to an old machine to use as a server, also if we only need 1 TB storage, I could do a nice bit of RAID for better backup/stability.

What sort of spec machine makes a good mirror, I guess HDD read/write speeds and a decent (gigabit) connection are the most important, but what about CPU/memory etc.

Security - Again, I am waiting to get the Virgin broadband before upgrading my router, which will help with the security I guess, but I am a little bit concerned about opening ports etc. Is there anyway of setting up private/public areas within the home, I mean easily and cheaply. I am sure Cisco could come in and sort it out, but I don't have that much spare cash

Other - Is it just a mirror that the community wants/needs/would be nice or would other services be useful. I mean if you are going through the trouble of setting up a server "for community use" is it just being a repo the best use for it?

To be honest, even if the Maemo/MeeGo/Community doesn't need/want a host then I may do this anyway as a little project and maybe turn it into a Debian mirror. It would be a good learning curve, especially as my Linux knowledge is seriously lacking

As regards to the why......

I think your right, is Maemo a dead-end, or can/will it be ported to other devices and/or emerge as a better alternative "open-source" OS than MeeGo/Others???

I'm not going to comment either way, but if all the official support goes (including repos etc - which I could actually see Elop doing) then it definatly won't have a chance. Even if it is only the die-hard left (like N8x0 et al) at least they will have somewhere to continue developing and using the devices

Personally I would prefer to spend time/money/effort on supporting the few rather than the many