This sounds like something a madman would do, and certainly 16-bit real mode is insane, but back in the mid-late 90s I would think a large number of Internet servers were 486s.

I know I ran a major "topsite" for most of the core warez groups in around 1996 from a 486 and it handled a ridiculous number of connections. It was probably running BSD rather than Linux in those days though as I remember BSD being more stable/better performing at the time.