Addressing and Naming
Sunday, April 5, 2026
Naming Everything on the network gets a specific hostname, which follows a template. The naming template you choose for your own network is likely to be different based on your own desires, but here’s the one I’ve chosen: $TwoLetterSiteCode-$RoleTemplate-$instanceNumberOrUnit. Two Letter Site Code The two-letter-site-code is an abbreviation for sites that I have, or am likely to have, devices or vms located at. For devices, this is straight forward since they must physically exist somehwere. For VMs its trickier, because they could float around from place to place. For now, I’ve simply decided that VMs have a site code equal to their hypervisor host, but it’s open to modification in the future. E.g., ’s ln for London, se for Seattle, etc. …
Home Networking 2 - Architecture
Sunday, March 15, 2026
Physical and Logical Architecture This post continues from Home Networking 1. Brief VLAN legend The vlans we’re using for now are established like so: VLAN Purpose 1 untagged 100 Infrastructure management panels 900 Inbound ISP traffic 1016 Trusted network 1032 Guest network Logical Layout Recall from earlier we mentioned Router On a Stick, implemented thusly: --- title: Logical VLAN connections --- graph LR; sfp((ISP/WAN)); switch; ap(access point); hypervisor; firewall; sfp-->|vlan/900|switch; subgraph vlan/all; switch<-->|vlan100,vlan/all|firewall; end subgraph vlan/other; switch<-->|vlan100,vlanall|hypervisor end subgraph WiFi Networks; ap<-->|vlan/1016, vlan/1032, vlan/100 |switch end ISP modem goes into the switch, which in turn goes to the firewall. The ISP modem is an SFP unit, so it goes into one of the switches SFP+ slots. From there, a different switch-inserted SFP+ module connects to an SFP+ module on the firewall, over 10GB optical cables. The optical cables we’re using are “LC UPC Duplex”, meaning there’s one dedicated line for outgoing, and one dedicated line for incoming. Things can, in theory, go very fast on the internal network. …
Home Networking 1 - Overview
Sunday, March 15, 2026
Setup and Overview With advice from an expert friend, combined with barely even novice level talent and understanding of networks, here’s how I’ve begun to set up a network that may be used for both learning at home, and some minor commerical endevaors. One of the outstanding goals is to reduce reliance on cloud providers and proprietary solutions as much as is feasible. That process may also be a progressive one. …