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Hi! I have been working on my lab and wanted to share its physical and logical topology. I think I made a huge improvement on the diagram compared to the last one from an aesthetic point of view😎. Here is the logical topology. There are networks connected by BGP and I prepared a local network for each one of them. All the three local networks are reachable from each other as they advertise their local network to their peers. Among the three routers, I installed netem to the VyOS so that I can simulate some of the WAN characteristics like latency and packet loss. And here is the physical setup and topology of my lab. I used two L2 switches to connect three routers and to prepare a local network for each of the routers. I recently took a simple benchmark regarding bandwidth and latency using this lab setup. It's great have an environment where you can gets your hands dirty😏. See you in the next post!

Hi! I wanted to share that my lab is finally connected to the internet! For the last 6 months ever since I got my first switch and router, my lab never had gotten out of its LAN😅. It's the first time getting out of my LAN and interacting with the internet and I'm just sooo excited about it. The reason I decided to extend my lab to the internet is because I have been looking into technologies used over the internet, TOR in particular. I'm learning how relays used in TOR allows clients to hide their identity over the internet and how it helps people in some countries with strict censorship. I found the technology as well as the role it plays in society very interesting. I believe such technology to ensure people have access to learn what is happening around the world is crucial. Having such tool gives us additional choice in what we choose from the pool of sources and I believe it could make a huge different sometimes. I am learning that there are many ways that I can take part in the community and I'm sure there is something that I can do to help people out there! https://www.torproject.org/ By the way, I noticed that my lab topology is getting pretty messy😂. I'm currently working on BGP and I'll share a nicer topology here once I'm done with all the BGP configurations that I have in my mind. See you in the next post!!!!!

Hi! I have been working on l2tp on my lab and I wanted to leave a tip here as it took me about a week to finally make it work. I'm not sure if the problem that I faced is specific to the device that I am using, namely cisco 892 router, but here is the tip for those working on l2tp. When you are setting the interface which is used for tunneling the LAN, the one you apply "xconnect", it has to be a WAN interface! I found this very weird and confusing. Why would you want to use WAN interface for tunneling LAN interface🤣. The below link really saved me as the given answer was exactly the one I needed. Without it, I'm probably still working wondering why ping is not working even though that the tunnel is established and everything seems configured correctly. Cisco892で, "WANポート"を使わなければL2TP接続した両端の機器間でPing疎通できない I also used a lot of Switched Port Analyzer(SPAN) for debugging. It's very useful and fun tool for labbing! Below is the topology of my lab after setting up l2tp. I have been interested in benchmarking my networking devices for a while and I am hoping to make a post about it within a next couple week. Anyways, see you in the next post!

Hi! I have been working on my home lab for about 2 weeks and I wanted to share how it is going so far! I am trying to add as many things as possible that I learned on networking over the past 3 or 4 months. The topology is getting little messy but I'm thinking of organizing them once I'm done trying out all the things that I have in my mind😅. Below is the topology at the time of this post. And here are some of the info on the hardwares that appear on the topology. R1&R2: Cisco 892 VyOS: DELL Optiplex 3020 L3-1&L3-2: Catalyst 3560 L2-1&L2-2: Catalyst 2960 I'll be posting updates on my home lab whenever I learned anything interesting while working on it🧐. See you in the next post!

Hi! Today, I wanted to share that I installed VyOS on my DELL desktop as I needed additional router for my home lab. I usually install this kind of softwares on Ras Pi but I learned that there is no ARM64 version of VyOS😂. The reason I turned my DELL into VyOS is only because I wanted to try out BGP with physical devices😏. See you in the next post!

Hi! Today, I wanted to share that I recently turned my raspberry pi into to a firewall to make it part of my home lab. Here are some notes for setting up IPFire on raspberry pi. When I was setting up IPFire, I got stuck for a little while with a rainbow screen when trying to boot it up. 1. Set "hdmi_safe" to 0 which you will find in config.txt. hdmi_safe=0 2. Set "SERIAL-CONSOLE" to OFF which you will find in uENV.txt. SERIAL-CONSOLE=OFF Hope it helps if any one of you encounters the same issue. Firewall is something that I haven't really looked into and excited about adding new component into my home lab and learning what it is capable of!