Following the packet until the excuse runs out
Networking
Networking hooked me because the basic idea is so simple and the real-world version absolutely is not. Get a packet from here to there. Then add VLANs, firewalls, tunnels, multiple carriers, IPv6, BGP, redundancy, old hardware, new hardware, and a user who swears “the Internet is down.”
I have worked with networks in homelabs, offices, hosting environments, and data centers. The pages here are the notes I wish I had when I was learning how the textbook diagrams turn into actual networks with dependencies, failure modes, and history.
If you are learning
Start with networking foundations, then get comfortable with switching and VLANs, routing, and DNS and DHCP. Once those feel ordinary, topics like OSPF, BGP, IPv6, and tunneling stop feeling like separate magic tricks.
The pieces every network is built from
The stuff I keep coming back to no matter how large the network gets.
- Networking Foundations Addresses, packets, layers, and how the pieces fit.
- Switching and VLANs Broadcast domains, trunks, access ports, and the quiet source of many “weird” issues.
- Routing How a device decides where the packet goes next.
- DNS and DHCP Two services that make a network feel broken when they are merely having a bad day.
- IPv6 Worth learning as a network in its own right, not as “IPv4 but longer.”
Routing gets interesting
Where one subnet turns into an actual routed network.
- OSPF Interior routing, adjacencies, areas, and what the topology is telling you.
- BGP The protocol that made the Internet possible and many troubleshooting sessions much longer.
- VPNs and Tunneling Moving traffic through places it otherwise could not go.
- GRE Simple tunnels, useful labs, and the details that matter once MTU enters the conversation.
- VyOS A useful way to build serious routing labs without a room full of routers.
Networks people depend on
Designing and operating something that cannot just be rebooted whenever it becomes inconvenient.
- Network Design Failure domains, simplicity, redundancy, and planning for change.
- Data-Center Networking East-west traffic, resilience, overlays, and the physical reality underneath the diagram.
- ISP and Hosting Networks Transit, peering, customer routing, RPKI, and DDoS considerations.
- Network Security Segmentation, trust boundaries, management access, and not relying on obscurity.
- Monitoring and Observability Knowing what “normal” looked like before someone reports that it changed.
When something is not working
The part where networking stops being diagrams and starts being evidence.
- Network Troubleshooting A repeatable way to narrow the problem without changing five things at once.
- Command Reference Cisco, Linux, VyOS, and packet-capture commands I reach for.
- Network Automation Backups, templates, APIs, and the guardrails around automated changes.
- Projects and Case Studies Real examples are where all the neat categories start overlapping.
- Networking Homelab The safest place to break routing on purpose and learn how to put it back.
A network should be understandable
I like clever networking, but I am suspicious of cleverness that only one person can explain. A good design should make the normal path obvious, make failures visible, and give the next person enough context to change it safely. That matters in a homelab. It matters a lot more when someone is paying you to keep the packets moving.