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- RouterFreak: Top Monitoring Tools and Energy-Saving Hardware
RouterFreak: Top Monitoring Tools and Energy-Saving Hardware
Dan Frederick
June 12, 2025
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Top Monitoring Tools and Energy-Saving Hardware
Aloha RouterFreakers! 🤙
Whether you’re a seasoned network engineer, a home lab enthusiast, or someone just starting to explore the world of IT infrastructure, this newsletter is packed with resources to help you build, monitor, and optimize your home lab with confidence. We’re excited to share insights from our most popular articles, offering practical advice and expert guidance for every skill level.
This week, we’re highlighting two essential guides every home lab owner should read:
Keeping your home lab stable and secure is a top priority. In this article, we review the best network monitoring tools available today—focusing on solutions that are easy to set up and maintain, even for beginners. Learn about popular options like Prometheus and Grafana for detailed metrics, Zabbix for enterprise-grade monitoring, and lightweight tools such as Uptime Kuma for uptime checks. We’ll help you choose the right combination of tools for your lab’s needs and provide actionable tips for optimizing your monitoring setup.
Check it out: Network Monitoring Solutions for Home Labs
Energy costs can quickly add up in a home lab environment, especially with older or inefficient hardware. Our guide explores the most energy-intensive devices and how their power draw impacts your electricity bill over time. Discover modern alternatives like mini PCs and energy-optimized servers that deliver high performance with low power consumption. We also share strategies for reducing energy use, such as virtualization, smart storage choices, and leveraging power management features, so you can keep your lab running efficiently without breaking the bank.
Read more: Energy-Efficient Home Lab Hardware
🗓️ Upcoming Events for Network Engineers
Because even the best engineers need to escape the server room sometimes. Here’s what’s on the horizon:
Jun 16-17, 2025 | Berlin, Germany
Focuses on network automation, cloud-native tech, and DevOps practices.
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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Data Call
This week, we are leaving open our survey on your favorite Network Management Tools. Let us know in our super quick 3 question survey and we'll share the results with everyone in the next newsletter.
Our Audience Survey is still open!
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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