My Home Network Lab

Note: This is a live document that serves as network documentation for my home network/lab that I usually update when changes are made.

My home lab in its current configuration consists of two parts. One set of equipment for personal use that I utilize daily and experiment with networking, operating systems, virtualization, containers, and servers. The other is specifically for learning Cisco IOS and networking concepts to prepare for the CCNA exam.

Contents

• Hardware
• Networking
• Server Services
• Network Diagram
• Cisco Lab
• Notes

Hardware

• Palo Alto Networks ION 2000 running pfSense
• Linksys WRT3200ACM wireless router running OpenWRT in bridge mode
• NetGear GS108 Unmanaged PoE Switch
• Linksys SE3005V2 Unmanaged Switch
• ThinkCentre M920Q tiny desktop
• Dell Optiplex 7060 micro desktop
• Dell Optiplex 3020 micro desktop
• Raspberry Pi 5
• Cenmate Dual-bay DAS with 2x 14TB HDDs, configured as a RAID1 array
• Toshiba 4TB Canvio external HDD
• DeskPi RackMate T1 8U
• DeskPi Rackmate 12 Port Patch Panel
• PacStar 451

That's basically it. There's also my 2022 Thinkpad X1 Yoga (Hostname: saturn) and my wife's 2018 Thinkpad X1 Carbon (Hostname: venus).

Networking

I picked up a Palo Alto Networks ION 2000 off of eBay. It's running pfSense and has a 6Gb ports, a quad-core Intel Atom CPU, and 4GB of RAM. I'm using it as a firewall, but also all the routing on my network. Eventually I intend to configure a VPN for remote access.

Before the pfSense box, I had been using the Linksys wireless router running OpenWRT for a few years, but it's now just a WAP in bridge mode.

I initially bought the NetGear GS108 Gigabit switch because it was advertised as a "managed smart switch", and I wanted something to tinker with. I quickly found out that there's nothing "smart" or "managed" about it. However, it does have PoE so that's nice.

Servers and Services

At one point I had consolidated all physical servers into virtualized servers within Proxmox, but I gradually reverted back to bare metal after experiencing instability. I've also been playing around with VMware ESXi and plan to set up a couple VMs directly on my Fedora server (jupiter) in the near future.

• Hostname: Jupiter (ThinkCentre M920Q)
  Specs: i7-8700T @ 2.4GHz, 24GB RAM
  Storage: 1TB NVMe SSD, dual-bay DAS (2x 14TB HDDs configured in RAID1)
  OS: Fedora 43
  IP: 10.0.0.10
  Notes: Primary/production server.
  Services:
  
  • Samba/SMB - access files from the dual-bay DAS locally.
  • Jellyfin server - a media server service with a lovely GUI.
  • Cloudflare tunnel - configured to share a couple of services outside of my home network.
  • Syncthing - a peer-to-peer file synchronization application that syncs files across multiple devices. I sync a few directors across my laptop, phone, and server to sync to the DAS.
  • Portainer (docker) - a graphical front-end for Docker.
  • Audiobookshelf (docker) - audiobook management.
  • Immich (docker) - a pretty way to manage photos.
  • Wallabag (docker) - a read it later app.
  
  
• Hostname: Neptune (Optiplex 7030)
  Specs: i7-8700T, 16GB RAM
  OS: VMware vSphere
  IP: 10.0.0.20
  VMs:
  
  • rtorrent 10.0.0.21
  • Pihole 10.0.0.22 - a network-level advertisment and Internet tracker blocker that functions as a DNS sinkhole, blocking advertisements from making their way to hosts. It essentially provides false information in response to DNS queries, preventing connections to unwanted domains.
  • IQ-Core 10.0.0.6
  
  
• Hostname: Mars (Optiplex 3020M)
  Specs: i5-8590T, 12GB RAM
  Storage: 256GB SSD
  OS: Fedora 43
  IP: 10.0.0.30
  Notes: Testing.


• Hostname: Mercury (Raspberry Pi 5)
  Specs: Arm Cortex A76 @ 2.4GHz, 8GB RAM
  Storage: 256GB NVMe (w/ NVMe base)
  OS: AlmaLinux 9.5
  IP: 10.0.0.40
  Notes: Currently unused.
  
  

Network Diagram

Logical topology.

Cisco Home Lab

My Cisco home lab setup consists of a PacStar router and switch, a few Catalyst switches, and a couple Cisco routers. I managed to get a couple of these from an instructor, and bought the rest off of eBay. I don't have the Cisco branded equipment powered on all the time, nor currently have them connected to my home network (they're also loud and a bit dated).

• PacStar 441 Router
• PacStar 442 Switch
• Cisco Catalyst 2950 (WS-C2950-24) Switch w/ 24-ports
• Cisco Catalyst 2950 (WS-C2950T-24) Switch w/ 24-ports + 2 Gigabit ports
• Cisco Catalyst 2960 () Switch w/ 48 ports + 2 Gigabit ports
• Cisco Router 2911 w/ 3 Gigabit interfaces
• Cisco Router 2801 w/ 3 Fast Ethernet interfaces

Notes

Further reading.