Homelab
Over the years, I have had several iterations of my homelab. In fact, I think I had a homelab before it was cool to have a homelab. Back in 2003, when I really got interested in the world of web hosting, websites servers, and everything else, I wanted to have my own server at home. So, eventually, after a lot of convincing my parents, I was able to get an old Dell server that we had in our basement. This allowed me to learn a lot about installing, managing, and dealing with servers. Eventually, this grew as I learned more about networking. And now, today, while I don't have much of a lab, I learned a lot because of it. In this section, I'll document my own homelab and provide some helpful information for yours.
Homelab Networking
When you get into your homelab, it might be tempting to just pick any old IP scheme. But just like everything else, some good planning goes a long way.
For example, you might want to pick 10.0.0.0 or 192.168.1.0 in either a /8 or /24, respectively. But
you should put some thought into things. For example, are you going to use VLANs? If you are,
you might want to consider using 10.0.0.0/8 and then subnetting things down. For example, in my network, I have a supernet of
10.0.0.0/8 and then I subnet this down. 10.200.0.0/16 is anything in my colo. 10.204.0.0/16 is anything in my house.
You should also take time to plan around IPv6 in your homelab as well. While most ISPs will, by default, hand out a /64 prefix, I've found
that if you request a /56 prefix in your hint, they will give it to you. At least my ISP does. The benefit to this is that a /56
will give you 256 /64 prefixes. I doubt even the most VLAN-intesive homelab will have 256 VLANs.
What equipment should I use?
You might be wondering what network equipment you should be using for your homelab. The answer will depend on what you are ultimately planning on doing. You might find that Ubiquti might fit your bill. In other cases, you might find Cisco or another vendor works better. It's important to remember that it's your network. Use what you're most comfortable with!