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What networking tools or tricks do you swear by for home labs?

A

artdream

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Hey folks,

I’ve been slowly piecing together my home lab (mostly for learning and testing), and I’m looking to make network management a bit more streamlined.

Any tools, scripts, dashboards, or monitoring setups you’d recommend?

Not looking for full enterprise bloat — just curious what’s been genuinely useful for you.

Things I’d love suggestions on:
  • DHCP/DNS control
  • VLANs
  • Auto device discovery
  • Uptime alerts
  • Config backups
Cheers in advance!
 
I guess it'd be worth asking what you're setting up in the home lab? Physical hardware but running virtual machines, or only physical servers? Network attached Storage? Networking hardware (switches, etc.)?

I know a little but am not primarily a networking/server guy. But I'm guessing you would get those questions from the guys on here that are so they'd have a scope of what to suggest, particularly when it comes for monitoring tools, config backups, and the like.
 
Basically your asking for features supported by any higher quality router out of the box.

Only twist being I started using N8N for uptime tracking since I have a little more control about what it does and doesn't care about.
 
I run PFsense on a dedicated PC (hardware, no virtual) but am also not much a networking guy. Dont use 90% of the features available, but it definitely covers all the bases you're after.
 
CMetaphor said:
I run PFsense on a dedicated PC (hardware, no virtual) but am also not much a networking guy. Dont use 90% of the features available, but it definitely covers all the bases you're after.
Click to expand...
do you need to have PFsense on every machine or just one that is between your clients and your modem / router? do you leave the NAT on or have to set it to DMZ or similar?
 
Marzipan said:
do you need to have PFsense on every machine or just one that is between your clients and your modem / router? do you leave the NAT on or have to set it to DMZ or similar?
Click to expand...
It is the router. Also a gateway, VPN, troubleshooting, traffic shaper, VLANs, and about 20 other features im too dumb with networking stuff to know.
 
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