Illustration of a home network router connected securely to a cloud gateway

Networking

Practical articles about home networking, VPNs, IPv6, routing, OpenWrt, Oracle Cloud connectivity and network troubleshooting. These posts are based on real-world network projects, configuration work and technical investigations.

  • Illustration of a smartphone controlling a soundbar across two isolated network segments through an OpenWrt router
    Making Spotify Discover My Sonos Beam Across VLANs
    How I made Spotify discover and control a Sonos Beam across isolated OpenWrt VLANs using Avahi, omcproxy, firewall rules, and Wi-Fi multicast tuning.
  • Architecture illustration of a Minecraft server on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure with Podman
    Minecraft Server on OCI Free Tier with Rootless Podman
    My ten-year-old son wanted a Minecraft server for playing online with friends. I wanted something small, controlled, allowlisted, and useful as a real-world excuse to run rootless Podman with systemd on an Oracle OCI Free Tier ARM instance.
  • Featured image alt text: Isometric network diagram showing a cloud server relaying IPv4 and IPv6 traffic to a home router, Raspberry Pi and VPN endpoint.
    IPv4-to-IPv6 Relay for Home Services Behind CGNAT
    My home network has public IPv6 but no public IPv4 because of CGNAT. This article describes how I use a small Oracle Cloud Free Tier Ubuntu VM, systemd and socat to relay public IPv4 SSH and WireGuard traffic into IPv6-reachable home systems.
  • Illustration of an OpenWrt home router accessing HAMNET through an L2TP tunnel
    OpenWrt: Accessing HAMNET over L2TP
    Anleitung zur Einrichtung eines L2TP-Zugangs ins HAMNET auf einem OpenWrt-Router, inklusive Firewall, Routing, DNSMASQ und Troubleshooting.
  • DOAG 2024 speaker banner for a session about connecting a home office with Oracle Cloud
    Connect Your Home Office to Oracle Cloud – DOAG 2024
    On Tuesday, November 19, 2024, I had the opportunity to speak about Oracle Cloud. Have you ever wondered how to connect your home office to the Oracle Cloud and exchange routes dynamically with BGP? If so, I hope my presentation provided some inspiration. This presentation is a follow-up to my first session at DOAG 2022,
  • Illustration of a virtual firewall appliance protecting public and private cloud network segments on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
    Install OPNsense® on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)
    Easily install OPNsense® on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to secure your cloud environment with a community-driven firewall solution.
  • Generic indoor Wi-Fi access point on a network workbench during an OpenWrt firmware installation process.
    Install OpenWrt on TP-Link EAP245 v1
    How-to install OpenWrt on TP-Link EAP245 v1
  • Illustration of OSPF route exchange between a cloud router and a home router over a secure WireGuard IPv6 tunnel.
    WireGuard VPN over IPv6 with OSPF on OCI – Part IV
    This post will describe the way to setup a WireGuard site-to-site VPN using IPv6 and OSPF in the Oracle Cloud Free Tier. Part IV is focused on routing and OSPF.
  • WireGuard home router setup over IPv6 with OSPF
    WireGuard VPN over IPv6 with OSPF on OCI – Part III
    This post will describe the way to setup a WireGuard site-to-site VPN using IPv6 and OSPF in the Oracle Cloud Free Tier. Part III is focused on the WireGuard setup and configuration of the home router. In my case it’s an EdgeRouter™-X with version 2.0.9.
  • Router configured for a WireGuard VPN over IPv6 with OSPF
    WireGuard VPN over IPv6 with OSPF on OCI – Part II
    This post will describe the way to setup a WireGuard site-to-site VPN using IPv6 and OSPF in the Oracle Cloud Free Tier. Part II is focused on WireGuard setup and configuration in the cloud.
  • Illustration of a tablet device using a local DNS resolver while an external public DNS route is blocked by a router blackhole route.
    How to remove the Google DNS server entry from a Kindle?
    How to remove the Google DNS server from my Kindle? Configuring my Kindle network configuration, I observed something spooky. Despite using DHCP and my own network services, there appeared the Google DNS server address 8.8.8.8 in the network configuration, always.
  • WireGuard VPN over IPv6 with OSPF on Oracle Cloud Free Tier - Part I: OCI Preparation
    WireGuard VPN over IPv6 with OSPF on OCI – Part I
    This post will describe the way to setup a WireGuard site-to-site VPN using IPv6 and OSPF in the Oracle Cloud Free Tier
  • Illustration of a Home LAN client sending traffic for a nonexistent private segment, with the core router dropping it through a local blackhole route.
    It’s not me, it’s you! … Me? No! It’s you! – black hole/null routing
    A practical explanation of blackhole/null routing for home networks, showing how a core router can drop unused private IPv4 destinations locally instead of forwarding them to the default gateway.
  • Illustration of a stale IPv6 static route being removed from a router runtime routing table.
    Delete IPv6 Route on EdgeRouter-X
    How to remove a stale IPv6 static route from an EdgeRouter-X when it has disappeared from the saved configuration but still exists in the Quagga/Zebra routing table.