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Nerds On Tap
Welcome to "Nerds on Tap," the podcast where tech industry leaders, entrepreneurs, and enthusiasts gather to explore the exciting intersection of technology, business, and innovation. Join Tim and his co-host as they dive into lively discussions, valuable insights, and thought-provoking conversations with a diverse range of guests.
From the latest trends in technology to the world of startups and entrepreneurship, "Nerds on Tap" covers it all. Each week, Tim shares candid conversations with industry experts, seasoned entrepreneurs, and rising stars, uncovering success stories, lessons learned, and emerging ideas shaping the future.
Grab a cold one, pull up a stool, and join the conversation. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur seeking advice, a tech executive keeping up with industry developments, or simply a curious listener who loves exploring new ideas, "Nerds on Tap" is your go-to podcast. Tune in, subscribe, and join the community of nerds who love to tap into the fascinating world of tech and business. Cheers!
Nerds On Tap
Mastering Home Labs with Colby Sullivan: Tech Skills, DIY Projects, and Networking Insights
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Ever wonder if repurposing old hardware could skyrocket your tech skills and revolutionize your home network? This episode promises to transform your understanding of home labs and DIY tech setups with our special guest, Colby Sullivan, a Senior Implementations Engineer at Digital Boardwalk. Colby takes us on a nostalgic journey, from his first experiences with Windows Home Server in the mid-2000s to the latest trends in DIY tech. Get ready for a deep dive into practical advice and heartwarming tech memories that will inspire both seasoned tech enthusiasts and curious beginners alike.
Discover the transformative power of maintaining a home server and how it can sharpen your enterprise-level IT skills. Colby shares real-world examples of how his early adoption of tools like Unify not only benefited his home lab but also led to major implementations at Digital Boardwalk. We discuss the importance of being a jack of all trades in the IT world, the value of cross-training, and the essential passion for learning and experimentation. You'll also hear about solving complex problems at work using skills honed in home labs, such as addressing vulnerabilities in Plex by configuring advanced router settings.
Explore the world of custom-built routers and NAS systems, as Colby and I compare them with commercial solutions in terms of performance, flexibility, and cost. We talk about the benefits and challenges of DIY networking, including repurposing old hardware and setting up wired networks in modern homes. You’ll also get a sneak peek into our personal projects, like setting up a dedicated pinball room, and the joy of having supportive spouses who indulge our tech obsessions. This episode is packed with technical insights, practical tips, and a touch of humor that makes it an engaging listen from start to finish.
This Episode's Beer:
Emeral Coast Ultra Lager from Destin Brewery
Gulf Coast Blonde from Doc's Hop Shop
New Zealand Pilsner from Crooked Stave Brewing Company
Sponsor of this episode: Digital Boardwalk
Digital Boardwalk is one of the top 10 Managed IT Service Providers in the United States. If you are seeking to outsource your IT Management, or if your IT Team could use some help with projects or asset management, give Digital Boardwalk a call today! They offer a FREE IT Maturity Assessment on their website. If you want to see how your business's IT scores against industry standards, go to GoModernOffice.com now.
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Welcome to another insightful episode of Nerds on Tap, where we talk business and tech and get nerdy for an hour. This time, we're exploring the fascinating world of home labs and DIY tech setups. Whether you're a seasoned IT professional or just starting out, building and experimenting in your own lab environment is one of the best ways to learn and grow your skills. Join us and our special returning guest, colby Sullivan, senior Implementations Engineer at Digital Boardwalk, as we discuss servers, routers, nas setups and more. Grab your favorite brew and tune in for a fun and educational episode. So let's welcome Colby Sullivan, who has over 10 years of experience at Digital Boardwalk, specializing in deploying servers, router switches, wi-fi, email migration, sharepoint deployments and more. Colby, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2Thanks for having me guys. I had a blast the first time. We talked about some electric vehicle news. Now we're going to dive into Home Labs. Let's go.
Speaker 1Yeah, no, love that segment. I still go back to that to listen to some of the stuff about electric cars. So we do appreciate you coming on way back when we had technical difficulties. Yeah, that was a fun day. So today we'll be covering three segments, including segment one building home servers and virtual environments. Then we'll move on to DIY networking and we'll wrap it up with how to expand and innovate in your own home lab. We'll conclude at the end of everything with our rapid fire questions. But as always, we must begin with a beer. Let's go so edge. What are we drinking? Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to nerds on tap. I'm your host, tim shu, and I couldn't be more excited to embark on this nerdy adventure with all of you. So grab your favorite brew, because things are about to get exciting.
Speaker 3Three, two, one go. All right, guys. So our first beer is the Emerald Coast Ultra Lager by the brewing company Destin Brewery. It's a light-bodied lager with a pale golden color, has a refreshingly crisp taste and a clean, dry finish. This is the lightest beer they make, unlike a traditional Kolsch. They remove some of the wheat and replace it with rice for a drier, lighter finish, and this beer has also won a platinum award in 2019 for the World Beverage Competition and a bronze award in 2019 in the New York International Beer Competition.
Speaker 2You want me to go first? Yeah, go ahead. The word I'm thinking of with this is refreshing. This is a refreshing beer. It's not heavy at all.
Speaker 1To me it's a wholesome beer. It's got those full-bodied notes in it, so I'm I'm getting that very flavorful, easy sipper beer that's very easy to drink yeah, very easy to drink and it's from destin well, that's even.
Speaker 1It's from our neck of the woods, so good beer to start the show with. Anyway, welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Let's get moving with our first segment. We're going to talk about building home servers and virtual environments, and this is something that Colby is very passionate about, and you know I watch you over a digital boardwalk tinkering all the time. So very cool to start this show off. So what was your first experience building a home server and what challenges did you face along the way?
Speaker 2Oh man. So my first official home server was probably back in the mid-aughts 2005, 2006,. Using a software, an operating system called Windows Home Server, which eventually became small business server on the business side. Yeah, so I used Home Server to run backups of my desktops at the house. It stored some media for me a long, long time ago, early days of sort of tinkering with servers just using standard desktop hardware but running a server-based.
Speaker 1OS home lab now. I mean, I've been fooling around with stuff since the 80s, but my first real home lab didn't come until, I think, right before right, when I moved to pensacola, probably late 90s, 98, 99, I started building pcs at home, um, and tinkering around with different ideas of making gaming cases, because I don't know if you remember. But you couldn't buy just a case with a window, you couldn't get colored cases, you couldn't get them with windows.
Speaker 2I had to mod my first one and cut the thing out and put the window on it. What did you use to cut it? A Dremel, just cutting wheel Roto-Zip? Yeah, four or five of them, because those steel cases just destroyed those, those cutting wheels. But yeah, I got, I got through it.
Speaker 1I I used a uh roto zip tool. I would go to pep boys and buy uh window, uh weather stripping that you would use on a car I use that too and I would run it around the edge and then I would uh get plexiglass and throw it on the back and some hot glue yeah, those, those cold cathode tubes on the inside oh yeah, lights and stuff before they were expensive.
Speaker 2Yeah, before leds, there was cold cathode and they were great. They had a toggle switch.
Speaker 1Yeah, that, that was wired into it. Yep, and uh, yeah, and then they they've obviously used uh, what's the technology they're using for those?
Speaker 2now led strips strips, yes, just plugged right into the motherboard, adjustable that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1I think that's the first one I remember. And then, obviously, when I was studying for MCSE way back in the day, I remember doing that had to learn the administration, so I had to throw a server in there, but PCs was building them, I think was the first thing I dove into. So for someone new to the concept, now this this is a loaded question because I really want to dig in with this with you. For someone new to the concept, how would you explain the benefits of setting up a virtual server environment?
Speaker 2at home. Great question For people who you know, who want to learn how to get into different operating systems. For example, there are plenty of people that know the foundations of networking and computing but they may not be familiar with Linux. For example, they may get hired on to a firm that specializes in Linux servers. Homeabs are a great way to experiment with other operating systems that you're not used to, and Linux is so easy to virtualize. It's so lightweight, free for the most part, so very easy to experiment with different operating systems.
Speaker 1So, being so lightweight, you can pretty much throw it on an old setup or an old rig.
Speaker 2Yeah, in fact laptops actually work really well as a first home lab server because, if you think about it, they have the kvm built in. They've got the keyboard, video and mouse built in, right. So like let's say, you know you can't afford a, you know a rack style server with its own dedicated slide out monitor, right, your laptop has it built in. It's even got a built-in ups. It's got a battery built in. So laptops are great for that kind of stuff. You know, throw in a solid state add some ram.
Speaker 1You're ready to, ready to go, so okay. So, before I get into any more questioning, take us, take us into that world, I mean yeah so I'm going to take linux. I'm going to slap it onto a laptop.
Speaker 2Um what am I going to?
Speaker 1what do I do next?
Speaker 2the. The software that I use to run my virtualization platform of my home lab is called Proxmox. Proxmox has been around for years. It's um, it's Linux based. I I believe it is based on Debian, which is your just sort of standard. You know, uh, vanilla Linux flavor. Ubuntu is also based on Debian.
Speaker 2Debian is very flexible and I use Proxmox to host some lightweight machines, like I've got one that hosts a Windows machine that I refer to as my jump box.
Speaker 2So basically, if I'm, you know, out and about and I need to log into my network, or if something's not working, I can hop into that Windows virtual machine and then I got access to the whole network from there, rather than leaving my computer on all the time, my gaming rig on all the time. I just have a very lightweight virtualization host that's 6 watts instead of being 250 TDP. On my Ryzen rig I run a Windows VM. I run a virtual machine that does whole home ad blocking Every single device on my network phone, tablet, computer, whatever. Ads are just not a thing, they just don't exist. It's really cool to go to speedtestnet and see all the ads around the speedometer and then you enable the ad blocker and this is not software in the browser. This is something built into the network infrastructure, okay, and once you connect to it, you refresh and the ads just disappear like they're never there. It's awesome, dude.
Speaker 1So is it for the? Audience here for someone that has no idea what you're talking about. Has no idea what you're talking about, so is it? This is on a machine between the internet and all the devices that are connected to your land exactly so.
Speaker 2So the internet comes in. I've got at&t fiber.
Speaker 1Um, I know you're you're looking forward to getting that well I'm excited I see that the cables are poking out of the ground right now in our neighborhood, so I've got at&t fiber.
Speaker 2I use their, their modem, right, I plug my, my firewall that I have purpose built, you know I, I we can get into the software on there, but I have my firewall and then I have my switches and all that and my, my virtualization server is plugged into those switches in my rack. So it, you're right, the server sits between my devices and the internet, so all of that stuff is filtered through that for ad blocking and things like that.
Speaker 1So are you using Linux to host Microsoft Windows environments?
Speaker 2Yeah, so Proxmox is Linux-based and I'm running a Windows VM on that, just as my jump box. Like I said, it's sort of like a lightweight terminal server.
Speaker 1Easy to administer.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah, because if I need to get into, if I need to log into something, pull up chrome. I've got a dashboard that has icons, quick icons to all my stuff that I would need home labs are. I'm sorry. Dashboards are very popular with home labs because a lot of home labs have a lot of different things and you know, ain't nobody got time to remember all these bookmarks and all that stuff.
Speaker 2So you want a nice like front-end interface that just shows you icons here's your router, here's your switches, here's your ad blocking and it takes you where you need to go. So it's sort of like my uh so is it?
Speaker 1lay it out in kind of a uh infrastructure diagram, flow chart.
Speaker 2You can do it that way, or you can just say here's, here's a button to go there, yeah, so sort of just like on your phone, your app are just shortcuts, that's all it is.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's pretty sweet. It makes it a lot easier so you can track down any device on your network pretty quickly by doing that, if you've got IoT stuff out there.
Speaker 2I'm using the cameras, I'm using all the UniFi stack Other than the router. Everything in my network is UniFi Switches, access points, points, cloud key, all that stuff, all the same stuff we use here, yeah, you know, for our clients. I mean, I've been, I've been using, yeah, unify, for before we started using, so, all your cameras, I actually don't have any, um, I have, uh, the nest cameras because I've got their doorbell and everything you already had yeah I don't have any of the unify cameras yeah, good I've used them yeah and, and they work
Speaker 1yeah, we use them so that's cool, they they work pretty well. So what are some common mistakes people make when building their first home server and and how how can those mistakes be avoided?
Speaker 2yeah, um, so number one raid is not a backup. So uh, ask me how I know, but it is. Yeah, come on, we can mirror the data. Right, but what happens when the data?
Speaker 1Just go RAID 1.
Speaker 2Yeah, what happens when the data itself is bad and it's like well, sure, right.
Speaker 1The bad data. You still got to have redundancy outside of the RAID.
Speaker 2So I learned the hard way that we definitely need, you know, you definitely need offsite backups. I have a solution for that. That's really cool. A friend of mine has a similar type setup as me and we have a connection between our networks and we use a portion of our network attached storage as offsite backups for the other person, which is cool. So it's scheduled, it just runs and you know, sends it over the internet. He lives in Pennsylvania somewhere, you know. So it's scheduled, it just runs and you know sends it over the internet. He lives in Pennsylvania somewhere, you know. So I I back up his stuff, he backs up mine.
Speaker 1Works out for both of us, any other, any other mistakes that you've made over the years? Yeah, I mean don't.
Speaker 2So if you're interested in getting into home labbing, I mean it basically just a home network that is built around, you know, business grade or enterprise grade hardware for the purposes of tinkering or automation. Virtual you know virtualization that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1So is this? This isn't a production network. This is a network that's isolated. It is Okay.
Speaker 2Yeah, so like. So I definitely do have a production network where you know, tablets, desktops, laptops all the stuff we have at our house runs on that. But I absolutely do have an IoT network and that's the next thing I was going to get into. Number one, when you're starting off, you don't have to go crazy with the hardware, start small, get an old laptop, don't just go to eBay and just purchase a $7,000. But because it's all scalable, right, you can just upgrade whenever you want. But as far as the, the network segmentation goes, all of my like amazon echoes and all my automation stuff, as far as lighting or anything that plays music or does some kind of like smart home feature, is all in its own separate vlan or virtual land so it cannot communicate with my production network.
Speaker 3I can get to it, but it can't get to me right and can you tell me, like, why you have it separated like that?
Speaker 2yeah, for sure. So, uh, I spoke about the nest stuff earlier. So my nest thermostat, um, that just is on my, my wi-fi network, the, the IoT Wi-Fi. So if Nest gets compromised right and someone gets access to my thermostat, if it were on the production network they could theoretically get to everything right Because it is on its own isolated network. Iot means Internet of Things, like a bunch of devices, because it's isolated. Even if that were to get compromised, they would only have access to that.
Speaker 1Just to the thermostat so they could heat or cool you, right, yeah.
Speaker 2Anything that's cloud-facing I have isolated.
Speaker 1You know, it's interesting that you bring that up, because a lot of folks out there use baby cams.
Speaker 2And those are compromised all the time, oh yeah. Compromised all the time Because people don't know how to keep up with firmware updates and security and all that stuff you know and they're watching that room that the baby's in so they're learning more about and they're listening yeah, so it's scary.
Speaker 1So how has building and maintaining a home server impacted your understanding of enterprise level server environments? Like immense, obviously, immensely. I mean, this is kind of a, it's not kind of a dumb question.
Speaker 2Great question, actually, because, like I can you know, I can test a lot of stuff on my own right Before it may even be a super popular thing in the enterprise. And, for example, unify. I started using unify long before we used it here and I mentioned it to you and we vetted the product, you know, when it was ready for us to use as a business, we started using it Right. So I've been able to apply my tinkering knowledge to stuff at Digital Boardwalk all the time. I mean, there's so many times when I've been messing with a virtual machine or something or anything and a weird error comes up and I would not have ever seen that in any other context, right. And then it happens here and someone's like what is this? And I'm like, oh, that's easy, hit this done, fix, cause I've seen it before, because you've seen it.
Speaker 2Yeah, and it's just cause I have a passion for all these learning and seeing how things work and just you know, messing around. I mean you can't be afraid to break stuff. That's another thing. You mentioned mistakes earlier. You cannot be afraid to break stuff. That's the whole point of this.
Speaker 1Yeah, colby, how long have you been at digital boardwalk? This is my 11th year, 11 years, and and you know it's interesting that you say that because obviously, sticking around at Digital Boardwalk, one of the things that we've noticed with you is you have a passion, and we know that you tinker outside of work, because you wouldn't know all the things that you know without doing that. So this isn't a scripted question, I'm ad-libbing here Okay this isn't a scripted question.
Speaker 1I'm ad-libbing here, okay, but what would you tell our audience that wants to get in it? You know how important it is to have a home lab growing up, well before you're planning to go professional with your career, like just um, I've always been one of those people that believes in cross-training.
Speaker 2Specializations are great, right, yeah, they're great. But I've been in situations before where something is broken and the guy or the gal who knows this thing inside and out that's their whole job isn't available, right yeah, I've always believed in the jack of all trades.
Speaker 1I don't want to wait yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah, I don't want the labor pains, I just want the baby. You know what I mean. So I've always believed in just broadening all of your abilities. So I mean I do specialize in network infrastructure, servers, that kind of stuff, network infrastructure servers, that kind of stuff. But I mean I also have messed around a little bit with you know, uh, creating docker containers and you know things like that.
Speaker 1so I I've done, I've I've done a lot yeah, I, you know that hits home for me because I don't like to wait either. I mean, I know if, for instance, on a vehicle, I I just put brand new speed sensors in my, in all my wheels on my jeep, and jack that thing up and rip, rip some stuff apart and redid it all because I didn't want to wait and I I'm not a mechanic. Yeah, that's funny that you made it.
Speaker 2I'm looking into doing like a slight lift on my, on my pickup truck. Yeah, so I've been. It's pretty straight so I've been when I you need to go four inches if you're going when I get when I I was thinking two and a half, two and a half when I I'm joking my uh, one of my brother and brothers-in-law has a six inch lift on his truck and it's like bro now it's no, it's not sway, yeah, um, we're getting off topic ladies and gentlemen, sorry, um, because this show's all about getting nerdy and it doesn't matter what we get nerdy with, we just get nerdy.
Speaker 2This is good, this is really good. I like this.
Speaker 1You like that. Well, I can get you a whole can of it after the show oh, cool Okay. We don't want you to get too. I see you've got that look in your eyes, so I don't want exactly what someone who's not fine would say so all right.
Speaker 1So share a specific example where your home server setup helped you solve a real world problem. Now you kind of led into it. A minute ago you said it helps you every day up at Digital Boardwalk because it's something you already encountered at home, so that would be a good yeah, something you already encountered at home.
Speaker 2So that would be a good yeah. So I use, I use Plex to play all of my media. Yeah, right, you know I rip a bunch of Blu-rays or have a bunch of music that I've, you know, accumulated over the years without getting super technical. There was a exploit or vulnerability and one of the like older plex versions, right? Um, my setup is done in such a way that it automatically updates itself anyway. But even if I hadn't, I manually applied this fix via my pf, since router that 99 of routers out there wouldn't have been able to do, right. So, um, basically, there's a uh, there's a plugin or a package that I have installed on my router that allows me to limit connectivity based on geolocation, right? So, even if I have a port open, like, let's say, I wanted to, host.
Speaker 1That is the nerdiest thing I think I've ever heard on this show.
Speaker 2So even if I wanted to host a website, right, I could allow. I could allow it. So only us people could get in, not other countries, that kind of stuff. So I sort of hardened my plex server by blocking other countries from being able to connect to it before the vulnerability would have taken effect. Yeah, Right, that makes sense so yeah, all right, I told you I'm not a normal person. I totally acknowledge that.
Speaker 1With this kind of stuff, so, before we end this segment, one more question. What are the key factors to consider when deciding whether to build a physical server or set up a virtual one? In the cloud, like what? What is going to make me want to go virtual versus going physical? So, besides the obvious, which is cost these well?
Speaker 2I would argue there is no argument. There is no pro physical server argument anymore, ever, because computers, servers, whatever you know desktop computer, even you know desktop computer, even you know laptops even if they're three or four years old, they are still so much more powerful than what installing one operating system can do. In other words, you're you're leaving hardware on the table by not virtualizing. Right. Right, a laptop can easily run eight linux vms like in its sleep to do specific things. So it may not be the answer you were looking for, but to me the answer is always to virtualize.
Speaker 1I think that's exactly the answer I was looking for, because, you know, when we, for instance, when Digital Warwalk was starting back in 2009, 2010, it was all about physical, physical, physical. Everything was still.
Speaker 2I mean back, I mean we're talking 15 years ago, I remember taking servers out to a place and all they do is host files. And now, what do we do? Yeah, it's all VMs. If we're not doing a virtual machine. It's like what's going on here? Or consolidate, because we're still running into physical servers, Even if it is even if you're not breaking up the hardware and you are just running one virtual machine, it's infinitely easier to migrate a virtual machine than it is a physical machine. It's infinitely easier, Well, back up as well.
Speaker 1I'm going to use that as a segue into the second segment. We're going to talk routers, nas and SANs, but before we do, let's grab another beer Edge.
Speaker 3All right, guys. So our next beer is the Gulf Coast Bl blonde from the brewery docks hop shop in pensacola, florida. They described this beer as a beach beer, a fishing beer and a backyard beer.
Speaker 1I mean, that's even the idea more refreshing than that one I've had this beer several times before and it is totally that this is a boat beer. This is totally that this is a boat beer. This is a refreshing beer. This is a pool beer. Repeat the name of it, Tim, so our audience can listen to it and order more of it. It is the Gulf.
Speaker 3Coast Blonde. It has a low enough ABV that you won't hook yourself.
Speaker 2Nice Very good. Well, I'm hooked. Nice Very good Well, I'm hooked. I don't have a lot of. I'm not very good at describing things other than this beer is good, so that's what I'm going to go with. It's very easy to drink, just like that last one.
Speaker 3People appreciate a man, a few words.
Speaker 1Yeah if only that were me this beer has notes of simplicity and energetic optimism.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's good everyone.
Speaker 1So, diy networking, let's dive deep, let's get nerdy. What inspired you to start building your own router or NAS at home, and how did you get started?
Speaker 2So I got tired of constantly having to upgrade an off-the-shelf router solution because I kept overloading them. I guess you know, remember the.
Speaker 1So tell the audience what that means.
Speaker 2I mean it's traffic right, yeah, I'm about to. So you remember the old like Linksys like stackable router they were like blue and like I hated they were blue and black. Yeah, yeah, about to. So you remember the old like Linux Linksys like stackable router they were like blue and like I hated blue, they were blue and black, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1Isn't there a song about that? Blue and black, blue on black. Yeah, blue on black.
Speaker 2So I got to the point where, you know, the hardware just couldn't keep up with what I needed to do. It was limited by. It had a very, very small amount of memory like to the point where it was like 16 megabytes of ram. That's insane. And this was this was not that long ago, maybe 20 years. I mean by then computers were at least one or two gigabytes. The router should have you should not be bottlenecked by your most important network device. You know what I mean. Um, so anyway, I did some research on building a router and, um, you remember, uh, andrew smith. He worked with us for, yeah, yeah, but he built the jail here. No, that's the other andrew, old andrew smith.
Speaker 2Oh, yeah, other building, okay, but yeah, anyway, he um told me about this software called pf sense yeah and, um, I had heard about it, but I hadn't talked to anyone who'd used it, and this was in 2013. I had just started here and, uh, I went, did some research. I went to ebay and I found a watch guard firebox I'm sure you you've heard the name. Those yeah, those routers typically run their own, like proprietary software.
Speaker 2It's all licensed I don't like them yeah, but they had the capability to run pf sense, so bought a used firewall on ebay, installed it and I've been running it ever since. Not I've changed physical devices over the years, but I've been using the software and watched it grow for the last, you know, 11 years, and it's just so flexible, so powerful. I will never switch unless some other software comes along and it just blows out of the water. There's just no reason for me to switch so you're building these things yourself.
Speaker 1You're buying used hardware to house them or new hardware. Yeah is it? I just got a new I just got a new one.
Speaker 2A couple weeks ago I bought uh, so you know the little tiny computers that we typically sell, yeah, you know. So I bought something that's similar to that, like 200 bucks on amazon. It's got two, two and a half gigabit network ports on it one, one for the internet, one for the local. Runs a little intel n100 cpu, 16 gigs of ram nothing crazy, just it's overkill. For what? Pfc?
Speaker 1needs right six watts just sips power doesn't it, you know, and it's my router now so is there cost savings associated with this versus paying? You know a company that develops their own router well, it's free.
Speaker 2It's free, so you, you just, the software is open source, but you still gotta put it on hardware. Yeah, yeah, the hardware. Obviously you know you pay for. But I mean there are. I mean, how many? What's's that Netgear Nighthawk cost Like?
Speaker 1$300?. I mean, those things aren't cheap either. Yeah. So yeah, it's about the same so it's about the same, but you're according to what you're saying. You're getting more power and flexibility out of it Way more usage yeah.
Speaker 2So tell me about the difference between a commercial router and a custom-built router in terms of performance and flexibility. Well, I mean, you're definitely going to get the support with the off-the-shelf solution, right? We sell Fortinets here, right, and Fortinets are great because the way the firewall rules work is exactly like PFSense, so I know those just like the back of my hand, right. All rules work, yeah, it's exactly like pf sense, yeah, so I know those just like the back of my hand, right?
Speaker 1um, I think an engineer there that developed, that was probably going, hey why don't we just yeah, yeah, yeah, that's where the name came from.
Speaker 2They want to make sense out of packet filtering, right? Pf sense, right. That's just the name comes from yeah, comes from um. So yeah, with a, you know, with a commercial solution, you're going to get support, you're going to get that kind of stuff. On a DIY solution, it's all up to you to maintain it and things like that. But this particular solution that I use has a really great community, really good developers. They're always pushing out security updates. I've always found that you shouldn't be anti-open source just because you can't monetize it. You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean I love whenever we get a firewall or, I'm sorry, a Fortinet we have to install for a client here. It's always nice because I know that they're going to be able to do the job and I know those firewalls really well, oh they're badass.
Speaker 3Because of my.
Speaker 2EFSense experience, so yeah, so it's yeah, it's great.
DIY Networking Benefits in Home Labs
Speaker 1So for someone new to diy networking, what are the first steps to take when planning a home-built router or shared network storage?
Speaker 2um, pick your your hardware solution. You know um there are. You can buy a. You can buy a pf sense router like there is hardware that the software. There's a. The company that that owns the pf sense software is called netgate. They make their own hardware as well. You don't have to diy it, you can buy from them right. So decide if you want to. You know pay them for their hardware. Or you know, choose your own based on your use case. How fast is your internet? How fast do you want your you know local devices to own, based on your use case? How fast is your internet? How fast do you want your you know local devices to be able to communicate that kind of stuff? So I would say, start with the hardware, but also make sure that whatever software solution you choose is fully vetted and you know whether you're going to go with a free solution or a, you know, subscription-based solution. Whatever. Just do your research and make sure there's no vulnerabilities and things like that, or if there are, they're fixed.
Speaker 3I kind of feel like if you're not going to recycle old hardware and make your own router, you're kind of half-assing a home lab.
Speaker 2Yeah, 100%, especially for the purposes of home labs. You can just grab an old desktop like like dell optiplex is always is my go-to for people. They're cheap. I tell them, hey, go get a dell optiplex, throw in one of those half height dual nicks, you know, because they only come with one network adapter and you need two when and land. Yeah, uh, technically you can do it with one if you have a managed switch and all that, but that's the whole thing with v lands. You can actually do it with one if you have a managed switch and all that, but that's the whole thing. With vlanes, you can actually do it with one, but that's way too down the rabbit. Right, it's easier just to plug in two cables.
Speaker 1So I think talking about research where outside of the some of the r slash home lab.
Speaker 2All right, say it again so reddit as I cannot, I can't. I love red. I can't believe I'm saying this because I I've always felt like reddit is a. I go on there every day. I always feel like reddit's a cancer personally, but it's, it's like one of those things. You, it's not reddit that well, it's not reddit. That's the problem. It's usually the, the people, as with anything uh, I was gonna say that is great, is a great solution. Um, also, as as cliche as this is gonna sound, google is your friend.
Speaker 1Dude like you can just find so many resources yeah, yes, absolutely yeah, I've found, I mean shoot, we built this studio with uh using youtube. Yeah, so, um, you know I didn't.
Speaker 2These mics are incredible I've watched many a youtube video on how to spin up a site-to-site vp with PFSense or whatever, so absolutely.
Speaker 1Yeah, actually there's a really charismatic, cool guy that will show you how to install a Remy Halo bulb in your air conditioning unit, if you can find it on.
Speaker 2Oh yeah, yeah, I'll have to go look at that. His name is Tim Shute. I'm pretty sure I've seen that one.
Speaker 1So what's the biggest mistake you've made in a diy networking project and what and what did you learn from that?
Speaker 2experience? Um, great question, and I had I. This is my go-to. I always have this answer. It will always be this.
Speaker 2Um, I decided just on a whim to implement vlans at home. I already had the pf sense router, had all of the I was I wasn't using unify yet. I was using hp pro curve switches at the time. Um, totally, totally, you know, good solution. Um, I was using unify access points. I hadn't gotten the switches yet because you know they are not the cheapest of switches and there's a reason, because they're amazing.
Speaker 2Um, anyway, I decided to add vlans because I was. You know, we were, we were about to have a son, I was installing some baby monitoring stuff and, uh, all this other you know iot stuff at the time, 2014 ish, right, okay, I wanted to add some security, so I wanted to do vlans. I knew how to do vlans from a switching perspective, but I've never done vlans inside pf sense because I've never had a need to. Um created the vlan, put all the config in place, had all the firewall rules in place and then plugged everything in the way that, physically, was plugged in proper in. It was plugged in correctly, right, not in incorrectly. You know I'm saying had it all hooked up right, couldn't get an IP address to save my life. Could not pull an IP address from the router and it was just a simple firewall rule mistake that I had made, but I'm going to blame PFSense for this one.
Speaker 1Oh, you got a point of finger, Basically when you make. This is what an IT guy does, oh yeah.
Speaker 2It's got a point of finger. So when you so that basically when you make this is what an it guy does, yeah, it totally was my fault. The the way that this router platform works if you don't give it access, specifically like if you don't tell it it's allowed, it's blocked, right. So when I made the firewall rule to allow this vlan to get online and to work, when you make a rule in PFSense by default, it only selects the TCP protocol, which is not part of DHCP. Pulling an IP address, I only allowed a TCP, not UDP, not ICMP for pings, stuff like that. So I literally handcuffed myself by just choosing the wrong pull-down and it is TCP by default. But I should have seen that I needed all the protocols, right, right, and I didn't know. So why did you what?
Speaker 1made you do that, made me do what? What made you make those choices when you were doing the?
Speaker 2Oh well, because, like I said, I wanted.
Speaker 1What's the point to this?
Speaker 2I wanted the VLANs for the security, right, and when there's a point to this, I wanted the VLANs for the security. And when I made the firewall rule, I didn't read through it all the way. I said, oh, they know what they're doing, click, click, click, click, click. And I didn't read it properly.
Speaker 1But that sounds all too familiar, I mean, to any DIYer out there, right? Yeah, I mean, we've all gone well.
Speaker 3I don't need it.
Speaker 1I don't need the instructions yeah, I don't, I don't need the instructions, yeah, I'm gonna do what makes common sense. And then common sense doesn't solve the problem. And then you go back to the instructions and go well, that's stupid, why would I do that?
Speaker 2and then you do it and it works. And you know, I looked at the rule and I was like it's basically, like it's the equivalent of my lawnmower won't start because it had no gas in it. Yeah, you know, and it was just like okay I figured you'd have an electric lawnmower. I do, but I didn't, but I didn't.
Speaker 1You know, I didn't want to go down that road so how does building and maintaining your own networking equipment compare to using off-the-shelf solutions in terms of learning and hands-on experience now, we already got into this. Yeah, you said you were able to like, create and have more power and this and that yeah, but you know, it's sort of like uh god, I'm about to go super nerdy here.
Speaker 2But okay, you know the difference between george lucas star wars and disney star wars, right? George lucas star wars is good, disney star wars is not. And that's because george lucas created it, disney didn't, right? So if you just go out and just buy a off-the-shelf router platform, you may plug it in properly, you may get it online and it may work. But you're not the one that, like you know, you didn't choose that specific network card because that card works with that software, right? Or this, this specific, you know speed processor because you need it for something. You don't know the ins and outs of it. When you build your own router, you know. Or build your own computer, in general, you know it more. You know what components you chose, the components on purpose, right? Yeah, so you just, you're just more, you're just intimately familiar with it, as opposed to just buying something. Yeah, you know, you're in tune.
Speaker 1Yeah to the end result.
Speaker 2Yep, whereas disney right is churning they don't understand what made it popular in the first place. No, they, they just know how to monetize, exactly yeah.
Wireless vs. Wired Home Networking
Speaker 1Exactly. So, before we get into our next beer, we're going to end this segment with what are your thoughts on the future of home networking, particularly in the context of DIY setups and the growing importance of data privacy? So data we talked about, uh, uh, baby cams, I mean that's. That's bigger than data privacy. That's your children, yeah, that's you know. So actual, like personal threat. So, future home networking, context of diy setups and the growing importance of data privacy this is a loaded question, but there's so many ways you can attack.
Speaker 2Man. There's so many different angles to this Number one builders when they build a new home, it shouldn't be optional to install the Ethernet cabling. In 2024, when a new home is installed, it should be required but you know.
Speaker 1But what about wi-fi?
Speaker 2yeah, and and and. You know, wi-fi is great, but what? What people don't realize, we may not realize, is that wireless actually has quite a bit of wires in it, right, so houses need to be wired, just the same way that, you know, builders had to start learning how to run phone cabling right. In the 50s and 60s, every house every you know houses were getting phones right. Every house needs to be cat six at least today. It just needs to be home run. None of this?
Speaker 3yeah, I think so you know and they need.
Speaker 2they need to have a dedicated panel in a closet, somewhere that has a patch panel to plug into, and that way they can at least get a small network going and they're not relying on Wi-Fi for everything.
Speaker 1But they need to think about access point locations and things like that. Because I feel like doing that as an afterthought. It's so labor-intensive.
Speaker 2Right. It's so much easier to run cables when the studs are there and it's not. There's no drywall and things like that. It should just be part of the build right, but wi-fi is so fast now, colby it can be.
Speaker 2But I'm telling you, like wi-fi I'm going to use quotes wi-fi is never going to be as fast as hardline it. Just you know, every time there's a new wi-fi standard, there's a new wire standard. You want to talk? You know 1.2 gigabit. On wireless I have 100. Yeah, I can do 100 gigabit right, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1So I remember a time when I had I can't do 100 gigabit I wish, when I had three devices on a network yeah and now I have 60 plus devices, your tv, your, yeah, freaking smart watch your.
Speaker 2You know. Thermostat, your you know.
Speaker 1Everything is wireless now so being able to being able to what's the word I'm looking for? To being able to manage the traffic that not only not only travels across your wi-fi but also your ethernet, and being able to kind of diversify where that traffic is going, um.
Home Lab Expansion and Organization
Speaker 2Yeah, that's where the solution that I use comes in a lot, because I know a lot of people just aren't technical right and they just want to plug something in and have it work, and these days that's usually how easy it is, right. But you can't have convenience and security. You got to pick one. You can do a little bit of a happy medium, but you can't have both just full on right. And people need to educate themselves. They just they need to learn how important it is to, like you know, segment traffic and not just have you know one. You need a guest wi-fi. When friends come over, you shouldn't be putting them on your your. I'm going to use production wi-fi. Right, you should have a guest wi-fi. Yeah, you know, you should have an iot wi-fi for all of your little smart things. Most off-the-shelf router solutions. They may give you a guest one, but it's just not flexible enough to be able to secure it properly.
Speaker 1That's a perfect segue into our last segment, but before we're going to talk about expanding and innovating in your home lab, before we go into our rapid fire questions, before that Edge, we need another beer. All right guys.
Speaker 3So our last beer today is the New Zealand Pilsner by the crooked stave brewing company. They describe it as a new approach to a traditional style. This crisp Pilsner is dry hopped with a Maltu Aca from New Zealand, resulting in a distinct and refreshing lemon-lime profile I was going to say there's definitely some lemon-lime there.
Speaker 1New Zealand is definitely on my bucket list to travel to.
Speaker 2Oh my God dude, if I, like you know me, this one's good. We've had this conversation before. I don't fly. If I could just like teleport to New Zealand, I would. You know, lord of the Rings is probably the best film franchise I've ever seen, and that place is just incredible. Some other world.
Speaker 3Whoa, whoa, whoa. You said Lord of the Rings is better than Star Wars.
Speaker 1Oh God, that is another show guys.
Speaker 2Yeah, we can make the argument either way for the original trilogy, but Lord of the Rings has got to be up there. The top three trilogies of all time, if not number one.
Speaker 1When I was, in boot camp in the Navy many, many moons ago. You have to fill out your dream sheet and your dream sheet is your top three locations you'd like to go to post boot camp. So I put New Zealand, germany and Hawaii and they sent me to Oklahoma.
Speaker 2I thought you went to Germany or you lived in Germany.
Speaker 1No, I lived in Germany for many years when my dad served in the civil service uh, back in the early eighties, but I had it also on my list. As an adult they sent me to Oklahoma and I said wait a minute, there's no ocean.
Speaker 2Is there an ocean in Oklahoma?
Speaker 1Yeah, what is the Navy going to do there? I went to an Air Force base in the Navy and that's what they call in the Navy. If any of you sailors are listening, that's what they call skate duty. Interesting, yeah, skate duty is when you get the easy, the easy off because stationed on an air force base. Let me tell you something. It's easy, easy peasy. So, uh, expanding and innovating in your home lab. How do you approach documenting your experiments and projects in your home lab, and why is that so important to document? Oh my god uh, yeah, uh.
Speaker 2So that's that, you know. Harkens back to the stuff about how things I do at home help me with stuff I do here. This is actually the opposite. You know, we document.
Speaker 2You learned it here yeah, yeah so we document here and I use not the same solution just because I have no need to pay for all those licenses that we use for IT glue, but I take the similar approach where if it's not in the ticket, it didn't happen, yeah Right. So I have just a Word document I keep up with when I make major changes and stuff. But I'm doing all kinds of stuff. I use bit warden for my password manager. That's what I use I. I host it. I host it myself on my unraid. Of course you do, because I mean I don't want to, I don't want to pay for the, the service and I. They allow you to use, they have a uh it. They give you the, the source code, and if you're able to compile that yourself, then you get all the features for free. They won't support it because they're not selling it to you, but they have. They fully are allowing you to. You know, compile the source code yourself and get everything. So I do that.
Speaker 1Yeah, you're probably a little less vulnerable too, because you're not technically a target.
Speaker 2Yeah, I'm not. You know, I'm not using it in the cloud like all their customers are.
Speaker 1So how do you stay updated with the latest trends and technologies to incorporate into your home?
Speaker 2lab Great question. We kind of touched on it earlier.
Speaker 1Talked about Reddit, how much you love it and the people For me it's mostly YouTube.
Speaker 2I go to reddit anytime I have a problem that I can't just fix myself, just to see if anyone else has it. I've been doing a lot of reddit lately, lately with research on my frontier because I'm interested in lifting it. But, uh, youtube, just I. I watch a lot of tech youtube channels. Uh, network chuck um, tom lawrence, I know you know tom um uh, techno tim is another one. That's really cool. I don't know if you have him.
Speaker 1No, I haven't done that, he's cool.
Speaker 2Um, he's kind of I like his name uh, and then we were right on, we were right on top of that one. Uh, yeah, I, it's youtube for me. I, I watch a ton of of instructional videos and, um, not even that, just like informational videos on new vulnerabilities or you know new, you know stuff that's out. And I, yeah, I was the other day I was watching one. This guy got a um, he built a new small rack for testing and he's like, what should I do with this? And some guy was like, hey, make a um, make a video on a whole home audio streaming solution using this software, because it's perfect built for what he was doing.
Speaker 2And I was like, oh, I haven't heard of that. It's called mood. Um, is it E on the end and the second O is capital. I don't know some of these names. Um, it's so weird, um, but it's hosted on a raspberry pie. And that's not a pastry, folks, that's a little computer about the size of your phone. Yeah, you can do a lot with raspberry pi. And, uh, yeah, so I'm. I learned it in about an hour and I've got a amplifier plugged into my digital analog converter, plugged into my raspberry pi so I can have music anywhere I want in the in the house and using a nice web interface super cool.
Speaker 2So what are some?
Speaker 1cost-effective ways to expand your home lab without breaking the bank yeah um ebay.
Speaker 2Uh, honestly I love you can you can find enterprise grade hardware that is maybe five years old, that still has tons of life left on it, for pennies on the dollar compared to what it when you, when you look at the cpu that's in there, right, when it was brand new, that cpu cost twelve hundred dollars, right, yeah, you pay 12 200 for the entire server, you know, including ram.
Speaker 1You know hard drive bays, uh, rack rails, all that stuff, you know so discuss the importance of failure in the learning process within a home lab environment the importance of failure.
Speaker 2Yeah, why?
Speaker 1is it important? I could talk about this all day long in terms of running businesses, because I have failed more than I've succeeded. But in a home lab you have to fail, so figure out what is it?
Speaker 2happy wife, happy life, right? Um, you know, don't ever mess with the internet. When, uh, you know, unless there was a approved maintenance window, who?
Speaker 1turned off the internet exactly so?
Speaker 2um, yeah, definitely plan your maintenance accordingly. Um, don't, just, don't change more than one thing at a time, right?
Speaker 3you know, because then you get confused.
Speaker 2Yep, right yeah, don't shotgun a problem, as I call it. If you're going to make a change, make one change. Did it fix it? Nope, put it back.
Pinball Room Negotiations
Speaker 1Yeah, you know how do you manage the physical space and organization of your home lab setup. So let's talk about instead of talking about all the virtual and the knowledge and the education, what about the physical action?
Speaker 2setup Physically, housing it? Yeah, absolutely, ed. You've been over to my house. I have a. Technically, our house is four bedrooms, but one of those bedrooms is really an office that they call a bedroom. Right, it has a closet, so it's a bedroom, right. Um, that room is in the front of the house and our house faces West, so it's way too hot in there, cause the sun just destroys that room, right. So I was like this seems like a good place to put a bunch of expensive equipment. I put a, I put a dedicated AC unit in there and all that stuff. But anyway, um, I got it out the closet, got rid of the the you know the shelving stuff and put a rack in there. So I've got my servers, all my cables run to patch panels, all my equipment is rack mounted, so it's just sitting in a closet and I have a cooling solution in there, just like you would in a business.
Speaker 3Are your pinball tables in there too?
Speaker 2They are, it's funny. So my wife told me I can buy as many pinball machines as I want, as long as they fit in one room. I'm only getting one room, right how?
Speaker 1big is the room? How many square?
Speaker 2feet, I don't know, 10 by 14. Maybe it's a dining room and we don't ever eat there, so I was like we don't use this room for anything. So, uh, that's my pinball room, yeah yeah, that wouldn't fly in my house. I'm very, I'm very fortunate man. I I I'm the luckiest guy in the world. I'm telling you wouldn't fly in my house.
Speaker 1You need to. Uh, I I hope, kathleen, I hope you listen to this show. I'm actually downsizing too.
Speaker 2I I technically have twoleen, I hope you listen to this show. I'm actually downsizing too. I I technically have two machines right now. I had four as of like two months ago. I never I wasn't playing two other ones, so I sold them. And um, brian farley, emily's husband, he bought my royal rumble, okay he's but he's in washington, so I'm holding it for him until he can go get it. But I still have deadpool deadpool's bolted the floor. That's not going anywhere, so that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1I still need to get the black hole.
Speaker 2That'll be my one, I sent you that I know when you told me about it. They're not just. They're not cheap, though, man, they are expensive that was my first real joy of yeah, there's another one that's the exact same, called haunted house.
Speaker 1Oh yeah I played that, have you been?
Speaker 3to uh play the arcade bar in pensacola.
Speaker 2That's relatively new the grid, or yeah, yeah, yeah, it's on pace yeah, it's a great place.
Speaker 3They expanded the back room since the last time I've been there and they have a whole I.
Speaker 2I have not been there we could do a whole podcast on all right, we're not gonna talk about it actually before the show, we were talking about waxing your pinball, yeah surface because those balls tear it up. So yeah, so always keep your balls waxed.
Speaker 1There's no other way to put it tim I I yeah I don't wax my balls, I powder them all right. Next segment all right yeah, we may have to cut that part, I don't know, um, so we're gonna go into our rapid fire. Oh, that wasn't rapid fire, okay. No, this is rapid fire. We're looking for one to one word, to one sentence answers. We're gonna shoot through them quick, uh, so are you ready? Mr colby sullivan? All right, don't look at my screen, look straight ahead. First question favorite os, windows 10. I, I see you more as a windows me kind of go.
Speaker 2Oh yeah, emmy was great. Come on man 98, third edition. What did it stand for?
Speaker 1millennium mistake edition.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, I was not sure. I thought you were actually asking me. Preferred router PFSense. All right, I think I knew that Top protocol Top protocol DHCP, Because you got to have an IP address right.
Speaker 1We need to give him another beer. No, I'm good Go-to tool, your go-to tool.
Speaker 2Oh, I'm thinking go Go-to tool, your go-to tool. Oh, I'm thinking go-to like the guy I know what you're saying. Go-to tool Linus Tech Tips.
Speaker 1Okay.
Speaker 2Ratcheting screwdriver. Use it every day.
Speaker 1Yep, you were in here bragging about it one day. And last but not, least dream setup.
Speaker 2Come on, One sentence Wireless power.
Speaker 1Just no wires, nothing I thought you said everything needs. That is a prior. Nerds on tap show what we talk about wireless power there you go, yeah, yeah, um.
Speaker 2Minimalistic. I, I don't like clutter and I I can't seem to get it right at home.
Speaker 1So, ladies and gentlemen, that concludes this episode of nerds on tap. I hope we got nerdy enough for you in this hour and, uh, you know, if you have any questions, feel free to write into the show. I know this episode will probably prompt several questions, except especially if you're trying to build a diy home setup or lab at home. Colby, I'd love to help you guys out. Totally, yeah, um, do you have any last words for our audience here?
Speaker 2don't for. Don't be afraid to tinker. You know um, get in there, get your hands dirty, break stuff. That's the only way you're gonna learn thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 1Thank you, colby, for being on the show. Thank you, tim edge, for uh serving up some fantastic beers today. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you enjoyed the show and, uh, please join us on our next episode, where, uh, we will talk about something nerdy. Thank you, I don't know. With your friends, colleagues and fellow beer enthusiasts, let's build a community that embraces curiosity, innovation and the enjoyment of a cold one.
