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Self-Hosted Homelab Website

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Re: Self-Hosted Homelab Website

#71
post #65
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone ELI5 why PiHole is preferable to an in-browser blocker like AdBlock Plus?

Some not very technical reasons: 1) Run once, use everywhere. (Including devices without a browser, like an Android/Apple/'smart' TV.) 2) iPhones. 3) Configure alongside rest of networking, not clicking buttons to manually sync within browsers of the same type.

iPhones can run DNS blockers locally[1], and Apple has a good API for privacy-preserving content blocking[2].

[1] https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/dnscloak-secure-dns-client/id1...

[2] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/cre...

Re: Self-Hosted Homelab Website

#72

Sweet! Here's my homelab - https://i.imgur.com/QS0o4ni.jpg - I should self host an about page, too. - Netgear Cable modem - Edgerouter ER4 - 8-port POE Edgeswitch, powers the nanoHD AP in my hallway and acts as the backbone of the network. - Raspberry Pi 3 as a dedicated pihole DNS server - TPLink 16 port switch serves all the 'lab' gear. - 2x R720's. One is off, the other is a VMWare ESXi host. - ESXi is pretty ligh…

What shelf is that? And what are those foamy things for? Vibration dampening?

Re: Self-Hosted Homelab Website

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a fun project - but I wouldn't use old cellphones. Having these old cellphones plugged in all day - basically just made the batteries enlarge and broke the casing. But you can get old android phones for nothing -- even cheaper than a raspberry pi.

Don't they work with the batteries removed?

Most phones do not have removable batteries anymore.

Re: Self-Hosted Homelab Website

#76

I feel like I've missed a meme. What exactly is a homelab?

Most tech companies or larger IT departments have a space dedicated to testing, evaluating, or developing gear. The industry term for this is a "lab." People who collect gear and do IT at home as a hobby refer to their lab has a "home lab".

Re: Self-Hosted Homelab Website

#77

I haven't self-hosted a website in a long time. Do you still need a static IP in order to do so, or do you have some kind of service that updates the IP? How does it interact with DNS?

Something I want to experiment with is IPv6 DNS. IPv6 has enough address space that individual devices are universally uniquely addressable. With an AAAA record you can point DNS at an IPv6 address. So I want to try setting DNS to point to a specific device... though I haven't gotten around to it yet.

IPv6 DNS certainly works, as long as you're not using ISP provided home equipment that's too stupid to let you allow incoming connections on IPv6; but only if you always have IPv6 access where you want to access the things from.

IPv6 on public WiFi or corporate networks isn't a given, and where I live, neither is cell coverage, so I wouldn't want IPv6 only for important services.

Re: Self-Hosted Homelab Website

#78
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not trolling, I had no idea. Obviously I got it was basically a home server setup but I couldn't see where the term came from.

I don't know where it comes from, but the distinction's basically 'when a home server becomes home servers', or at least becomes a hobby, as opposed to just setting up and forgetting a Pi-hole once or something.

Originally, a "home lab" is specifically for learning and testing, primarily for professional reasons: i.e. someone going for a Cisco networking certification might get a stack of old Cisco routers and build test environments with them, someone learning windows networks might setup a windows domain on multiple PCs, ...

It's kind of morphed and people fold their home "production" environments into the term too.

Re: Self-Hosted Homelab Website

#79

If people are showing off a lab. My lab always sparks a conversation. I wanted to prove I could beat twilio's texting rates. https://i.imgur.com/gKknrJn.jpg

I worked in telco in Indonesia where this type of thing is taken to the next level.

Back in the day you would walk into a rooms filled with racks full of phones for SMS / Airtime sales "optimisation".

I tried to google some pictures now but it turns out Im behind the times. They've gotten rid of the phone part completely! [0]

Now you just buy the sim cards and let modems do the rest..

[0] http://modempool.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/2-jual-alat-...

Re: Self-Hosted Homelab Website

#80
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you wanted it to be publicly accessible in the future, I think you can rent a cheap VPS (DO Droplet) and set up a VPN, and then connect to that VPN on your Pi. Then you can have Nginx on the VPS and reverse proxy to any services you'd like.

I've been monitoring what VPSs are an option. I'd like to have something faster, because it'll be cost-effective, but I don't want another headache.

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