Traditionally when we assign DNS servers to hosts we assign more than one. For example, we may assign 8.8.8.8 as a primary an 8.8.4.4 as a secondary so in the unlikely event that one is ever down, we have a second one to fall back on. When we set up a single Pi-hole server with … Read more
Ubiquiti’s UniFi product lineup has seen enormous growth in popularity due to its range of high quality access points. While you will usually find professional grade access points in businesses instead of homes, they provide a benefit in any building. This is especially true for large homes or older buildings with thick walls where a … Read more
In a multi-site network you will most likely have VPNs connecting your sites, allowing remote connectivity to your main site. However, as these links are not necessarily 100% reliable, a dropped link could potentially result in the loss of monitoring data for a large number of hosts as the agent does not store any data … Read more
While VPNs are a great way to grant remote access to internal resources for a limited group of users, there are situations where you might want to expose an internal resource directly to the internet. For example, if you want to run a web or email server from inside your home or office you will … Read more
Blocking unnecessary traffic on your network is a great way to improve performance, security and privacy. Reducing the amount of traffic leaves more bandwidth available for the traffic you actually want and blocking malicious sites reduces the risk that you will download something potentially dangerous onto your computer. It also means that if you do … Read more
As the number of Linux systems you want to manage increases, you will begin to see a need for more integrated host and user management. This allows for single sign on so you don’t need to maintain credentials for every system and simplifies creating service users to perform tasks across the whole domain such as … Read more
Previously I have described how to set up a WireGuard VPN to access your home network. In many ways I prefer WireGuard to other VPN solutions due to its better performance and faster connection times but there are various reasons why it may not always be appropriate particularly in a corporate or heavily mult-user environment. … Read more
Last week Nextcloud released version 17.0.2. While the X.0.2 release doesn’t have as many flashy new features as the first couple of releases in a major version it typically marks the point at which the Nextcloud team consider the release stable for production. For that reason it is sensible to hold off on feature updates … Read more
Typical ISP-provided home router/firewall products offer only the most basic of functionality. Most will include port forwarding, basic DHCP and some ability to customise firewall rules. However, if you’re looking to play with more advanced features such as static routes, advanced DHCP options, vlans, VPNs or advanced network filtering and monitoring these products come up … Read more
The easiest way to provide full secure access to your local network from remote locations is using a VPN to encapsulate your traffic in an encrypted tunnel to access your local network.