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RouterFreak: Another Dose of Home Lab Nerdness
Dan Frederick
July 10, 2025
Sponsored by
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Let’s Get Nerdy: Home Lab Edition
Greetings, fellow packet pushers and cable wranglers! If your idea of a relaxing weekend involves more blinking LEDs than a Christmas tree and you’ve ever uttered, “Just one more reboot,” at 2 a.m., you’re in the right place. Whether your home lab is a fortress of enterprise-grade gear or a collection of suspiciously warm Raspberry Pis held together by hope and zip ties, RouterFreak salutes your dedication to the craft.
This week, we’re diving into the very foundation of IT mastery: home lab projects and storage solutions. Because let’s face it—nothing says “network engineer” like explaining to your family why the Wi-Fi is down (again) because you’re “testing VLAN segmentation.” Don’t worry, we’ve got your back with guides that will make your lab more robust, your storage more reliable, and your troubleshooting stories even more legendary.
So grab your beverage of choice (coffee, energy drink, or perhaps an adult beverage if you’re not at work), and let’s get started!
Featured Articles
Ready to level up your IT skills without risking the wrath of your company’s sysadmin? This guide introduces three beginner-friendly home lab projects that deliver maximum learning with minimal hardware (and minimal risk to your household’s internet access):
Virtualization Lab: Learn to spin up virtual machines and containers using tools like Docker and VirtualBox. Practice resource management, automation basics, and even disaster recovery—all from the safety of your spare laptop.
Home Lab Automation: Automate server setup and configuration with Ansible. Discover the joys of scripting, SSH key management, and YAML (yes, it’s supposed to look like that).
Network Security & Monitoring: Build a segmented network with VLANs, deploy a firewall (pfSense or OPNsense), and set up monitoring with open-source tools like Zabbix or Grafana. Bonus points if you can explain VLANs at your next family dinner.
Each project includes step-by-step instructions, key learning outcomes, and plenty of opportunities to break things (and, more importantly, fix them). Perfect for anyone starting their journey into the world of home labs.
Because your collection of ISOs, VM snapshots, and “totally not pirated” Linux distros isn’t going to organize itself, this guide covers three essential storage projects every home labber should tackle:
DIY NAS with TrueNAS CORE: Build your own Network Attached Storage for file sharing, backups, and media streaming. Learn about ZFS, RAID, and why ECC RAM is your new best friend.
Ceph Distributed Storage Cluster: Go beyond single-box storage and set up a fault-tolerant, scalable cluster using Ceph. Perfect for those who believe “more nodes = more fun.”
Cloud-Integrated Backup and Sync: Automate backups and synchronization between your lab and the cloud using tools like Rclone and Syncthing. Because nothing says “sleep easy” like knowing your data is safe from both hardware failure and accidental rm -rf mishaps.
You’ll get actionable advice on redundancy, security, performance, and energy efficiency—plus tips for documenting your storage topology so you can actually remember what you did three months from now.
Stay tuned for more expert tips, upcoming events, and community highlights in every edition. And remember: in the world of home labs, there’s no such thing as “too many backups”—only “not enough drives.”
Happy labbing!
— The RouterFreak Team
🗓️ Upcoming Events for Network Engineers
Because even the best engineers need to escape the server room sometimes. Here’s what’s on the horizon:
Aug 2-7, 2025 | Las Vegas, NV
Major cybersecurity event with deep technical content, networking, and training for security engineers and IT specialists.
Aug 12-13, 2025 | Boston, MA
Focuses on IT professionals, MSPs, and decision-makers. Offers networking, vendor partnerships, and actionable business strategies.
AWS re:Invent
Dec 1-5, 2025 | Las Vegas, NV
Cloud, AI, and enough networking sessions to make your head spin (in a good way).
That’s a wrap for new content this week! Keep Scrolling for Data Call, Engineer Resources, and Opportunities to Contribute and Connect.
Got a killer tip, a burning question, or a meme-worthy network diagram? Hit reply—we love hearing from you (and yes, we read every RFC you send).
P.S. If you enjoyed this, forward to a friend or your favorite sysadmin. Sharing is caring—unless it’s your root password.
PPS. We are testing out a new Newsletter platform, please let us know how the newsletter looks and performs on your devices. We are also always welcoming feedback on our newsletter, do you like our attempt at Networking humor this week? Reply and let us know!
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Resource Center
To improve accessibility to our free resources, we will include links to our free downloads page in every newsletter.
Call for Resources:
Do have Visio Stencils we are missing or Python Scripts we can share with other newsletter subscribers (no paywalls, we only ask visitors to subscribe to our newsletter for access). Reply to this email with whatever you can help our community out with!
Specific Requests:
We've received requests for the following Visio stencils, does anyone have these so we can get them into our archive and out to the specific RouterFreaks who asked for them?
Cisco RV345 dual WAN router
AudioCodes Mediant 1000B Gateway
Versa box
Contribute and Connect
We believe that the strength of our network lies in the collective wisdom of our members. As we continue to grow and evolve, we're reaching out to tap into the vast pool of knowledge and resources that you, our valued readers, possess.
We're looking for:
Technical guides you've created or found particularly useful
Troubleshooting tips that have saved the day
Book recommendations for network engineers at all levels
Online courses or webinars that have enhanced your skills
Tools and software that have improved your workflow
Industry reports or whitepapers worth sharing
Regular content writers
Your contributions will help fellow network engineers tackle challenges, stay updated with the latest trends, and grow professionally. By sharing, you're not just helping others – you're strengthening our entire community. How to contribute:
Email your resources to [email protected]
Include a brief description of why you find the resource valuable
Let us know if you'd like to be credited by name or remain anonymous
We'll review all submissions and feature the most impactful ones in our upcoming newsletters and on our website. Remember, every bit of knowledge shared is a step towards a more connected and informed RouterFreak community. Let's pool our resources and grow together!
Mahalo,
Dan on behalf of RouterFreak