Home Network Guy

Many users have ISP supplied routers or their own gateway/router devices that they must use or prefer to use yet want to add greater security to their networks without replacing their current gateway/router.

Improve Your Home Network Security For many home users, the main router used on the network is provided by the ISP (Internet Service Provider).

ISC (Internet Systems Consortium) is the organization that developed and maintained the open source ISC DHCP server.

To minimize disruption on my home network, I typically create most of my guides either in a disconnected lab environment or on my LAB VLAN that I have set up on my main network for this purpose.

Many users have ISP supplied routers or their own gateway/router devices that they must use or prefer to use yet want to add greater security to their networks without replacing their current gateway/router.

When taking a look at the TC300-TTG sent to me by Tometek, I encountered a number of issues using the SFP+ interfaces.

Ever consider building a standalone Plex Media Server and be able to play media on the same system?

When deciding to virtualize OPNsense on Proxmox, you may have a lot of questions on how to go about it.

Protectli offers various mini-PCs with 2 to 6 network interfaces that support 1G or 2.5G Ethernet.

After trying out some of the EnGenius wireless APs and switches, EnGenius sent me their ECP106 PDU so I could take a closer look.

Ever since setting up CrowdSec in OPNsense, I have had the desire to set up a CrowdSec bouncer on my reverse proxy to enable extra protection for apps/services hosted behind the proxy.

In my previous guides which mention the purpose and importance of a management network/VLAN, I used the default VLAN 1 for the management network to simplify the configuration of the management network because most devices default to the untagged VLAN 1 n…

When EnGenius sent me two wireless access points to review, they promised to send me some switches so that I can try out more of their ecosystem.

EnGenius has two main product lines each aimed toward the midsize business/enterprise or the small business/home users.

On my main homelab server, I run Proxmox VE so that I can virtualize using containers and virtual machines.

For the last several years, I have been using 3 TP-Link managed switches in my server rack: the T2600G-28TS (affiliate link) , T2600G-28MPS (affiliate link) , and T1500G-10MPS (affiliate link) .

A few years ago, I saw Kickstarter project that seemed interesting: the ZimaBoard.

Captive portals are generally used to allow users temporary access to a network.

My most popular guide at the time of this writing is how to set up a full network using OPNsense.

I had the opportunity to help with a small network deployment, which included a Ubiquiti UniFi 48-port PoE switch (USW-48-PoE) (affiliate link) .

Several years ago I wrote some guides on setting up Pi-hole using Portainer on a Raspberry Pi.

Nearly a year ago at the time of this writing, I received the Protectli 4G LTE modem along with the VP2410.

Out of the box Proxmox requires some configuration in order to receive email notifications.

At the time of this writing, I have been working to build out a lab network to help me more easily test various network configurations using mini-PCs, network switches, and wireless access points.

When you install OPNsense, it will generate a self-signed certificate for the web interface.

There are a number of places in OPNsense where you may configure various DNS options.

In this guide, I will demonstrate how to add a mirror vdev to an existing ZFS data pool in TrueNAS.

Nearly two years ago, I had the opportunity to review the TinyPilot Voyager after I was approached by Michael Lynch, TinyPilot’s (affiliate link) founder.

Have you ever wanted to build a small, compact music player using a Raspberry Pi?

After I had finished my review of the Gowin R86S-U4, I was sent a question on how to enable the 10G SFP+ interfaces in OpenWRT since they are not enabled out of the box.

The Hugo theme I am using at the time of this writing had several updates which I wanted to incorporate into my site.

In a previous review, I took a look at the R86S-P2 and the R86S-B3 models by Gowin Solution (see their international website).

Over the last several years I have seen many users who are deciding to use OPNsense or pfSense as their home network router software of choice or they are migrating from pfSense to OPNsense.

Around the time I reviewed the Protectli VP2410, I was hoping to review their 4 port Vault Pro model with 2.5G interfaces, but it was not ready yet.

When the Protectli VP2420 was initially released, the coreboot firmware for the VP2420 was not quite ready so it was shipped with the default AMI firmware.

Protectli is best known for their Vault firewall appliances, but they also make a variety of accessories that you may purchase for your Protectli hardware.

Since the publication of this guide, I have written a new guide which is aimed more towards beginners.

In July 2022, I was contacted by Gowin Solution (also see their international website) to review their new mini-PC/firewall devices which have 2.5G Ethernet interfaces.

If you decide to purchase a Gowin R86S mini-PC, you may wish to install OPNsense so you can use it as your router/firewall.

If you have you an existing bare metal OPNsense installation and you wish to migrate to new hardware, you have the option of exporting your current configuration and importing the configuration during the installation of OPNsense on a new system.

Unbound DNS provides the ability to create DNS overrides, which allows you to manually configure the IP addresses that are returned by DNS lookups for specific host/domain names.

After writing for this site for several years, I have recently been approached by a couple of hardware vendors to try out their hardware.

While much of the content on this site focuses on more advanced home networking topics, I thought it may be helpful for new users to write a guide on installing and configuring OPNsense.

When I first decided to migrate from my Ubuntu server to Proxmox, I added a 4 port 1 Gbps NIC (affiliate link) in my Proxmox system to be used by my LXCs and VMs.

When you have decided as a home user to make the switch from a consumer grade router to a more advanced firewall/router such as OPNsense, you may find yourself overwhelmed at where to begin with securing your router and your network.

Enabling multi-factor authentication for your accounts is a good security practice to follow and the account used to access the OPNsense web interface is no exception.

CrowdSec is an open source Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) which crowd sources various types of threat intelligence that is used to monitor and protect your network from known threats.

In my children’s bedrooms, we use old iPhones to play quiet music at bedtime and at nap time.

Originally I wanted to write about how to use a second OPNsense router two different ways: with NAT and without NAT.

There may be instances where you may wish to run an OPNsense router behind another router.