… What I look for now instead These days, I’m much more suspicious of networking gear that promises simplicity without giving me control. For a smart home, I’d rather have stable hardware, clear settings, and room to grow than another polished gadget that turns basic troubleshooting into guesswork. …
… This coincided with me using Gitea with a repository for my entire smart home and home lab setup. …
… Related I thought Proxmox would overcomplicate my home lab, but it did the opposite Proxmox became my home lab. Breaking my systems makes me a better admin No, really, hear me out They always say you learn more from failures than successes, and that's abundantly true in the home lab. …
… And a lab VLAN for a Raspberry Pi 4 running as a smart home hub and a mini PC as a home lab server. …
… Troubleshooting a network issue became more complicated and exhausting than ever. For any issue, I now had to ask myself first whether it was VLAN routing, firewall ACL, DNS, Docker networking, or the discovery protocol that was the real culprit. …
… Related Avoid these 10 pitfalls when setting up the network for your home lab Don't let these networking issues break your home lab enjoyment. …
… Related 6 tips to securely share guest Wi-Fi with friends Make guest access easy backed by robust security These misconceptions are common Home networking is one of those areas in tech where the conventional wisdom lags well behind the technology itself. …
… IoT and smart home devices, which are notorious for calling home, are now prevented from doing so. Everything is adequately logged and displayed for troubleshooting and auditing the network to check for vulnerabilities. …
… Sometimes the best homelab improvement isn't adding another new tool — it's realizing you no longer need an old one. AdGuard Home AdGuard Home is a network-wide software for blocking ads and tracking. …
… Home Assistant with device passthrough Smart home hubs dislike clever containment tricks Home Assistant can run in several ways, and some are more container-friendly than others. …