Network Character Device (NCD)?

[VirginSnow at vfemail.net]

Some of you are probably familiar with the Linux kernel's Network
Block Device (NBD) functionality.  In brief, it lets a daemon present
a local block device on a network via a UDP protocol.  Clients can
then access the device as /dev/nbd*.

Is there anything analogous for character devices?

I can imagine a kernel driver, peraphs called "Network Character
Device", that would take reads/writes/ioctls to /dev/ncd*, wrap them
up in UDP, and ship them over the network to a daemon on the host.
The host would then unwrap the calls, perform them, and send the
results back to the client.

The benefits of a Network Character Device would be HUGE... you could
quite trivially share all sorts of local hardware with a network.
Network audio, network scanners, sharing serial ports/modems, sharing
CD burners, etc. would all be easy to do.

Has anything like this been implemented?  Does anyone have an interest
in implementing something like this?