Networking

My home network used to be whatever my ISP router decided it should be. No VLANs, no proper firewall rules, no visibility into what was actually happening. When I started running Proxmox on the HP DL380 G6, one of the first things I wanted to fix was the network layer — and OPNsense running as a VM turned out to be exactly the right move. This post covers why I went down this route, what you need to make it work, and a step-by-step walkthrough of the setup. ...

Port forwarding has a bad reputation, and honestly, most of it is deserved. You open a hole in your router, expose your home IP to the internet, and spend the next week watching fail2ban block login attempts from IP ranges you’ve never heard of. There’s a better way. Cloudflare Tunnels let you expose self-hosted services to the internet without opening a single port on your router. Your home IP stays hidden. The traffic goes through Cloudflare’s network. And setup takes about fifteen minutes. ...

Running OPNsense as a VM inside Proxmox is one of the best decisions I made when building my homelab. You get a full-featured firewall with the added benefits of snapshots, easy backups, and no dedicated hardware required. The setup is a bit more involved than installing on bare metal — mostly because of how network interfaces need to be configured in Proxmox. But once you understand the network topology, it clicks quickly. ...

Most people’s home network looks like this: an ISP-provided router sitting in the corner, doing everything — routing, DHCP, DNS, NAT, and whatever passes for a firewall in consumer networking gear. It works. Until it doesn’t. If you’re running a homelab, self-hosting services, or just care about what’s happening on your network, a proper firewall is one of the most valuable things you can add to your setup. And with tools like OPNsense, it’s more accessible than ever. ...

If you’ve spent any time in IT circles online, you’ve probably heard the word “homelab” thrown around. But what actually is a homelab, and why do so many IT professionals swear by them? This post breaks down - and makes the case for why you should consider building one yourself. What is a homelab? A homelab is a personal computing environment you run at home for learning, experimenting, and building skills. It can be as simple as an old PC running a couple of virtual machines, or as complex as a rack full of enterprise-grade servers with a fully segmented network. ...

Welcome to BeyondLab — a place where I document everything I build, break, and learn. I work as an IT support engineer and have been running a homelab on an HP DL380 G6 with Proxmox, OPNsense, and a growing stack of self-hosted services. This blog is where that knowledge escapes the lab. Expect posts on: Proxmox and virtualisation OPNsense and networking Self-hosted services MSP and IT support tips from the field