My Homelab Network

What is a Homelab

A homelab is a personal IT environment designed for learning, experimenting, testing, and self-hosting services. It serves as a playground for networking, virtualization, system administration, and cybersecurity research.

---

Network & Infrastructure Overview

1. Internet (WAN): The entry point connecting the homelab to the global Wide Area Network.
2. Router: Handles the primary WAN connection and provides local Wi-Fi and Ethernet routing.
3. Switch: TP-Link TL-R470T+ network switch distributing wired connectivity across all hardware devices.
4. Wireless Laptop: Lenovo ThinkPad T470s running Debian 12, connected via Wi-Fi.
5. OPNsense Firewall: Main firewall virtualized as a VM in Proxmox VE (migrated from pfSense). Manages network traffic, security rules, and isolation between network segments.
6. Main PC: Primary Windows workstation used for day-to-day work and network management.
7. Synology NAS: Storage server equipped with 2 x 2TB drives for centralized storage, media archives, and automated backups.
8. Homelab Server (Proxmox VE): Intel NUC Mini PC acting as the hypervisor host, running Proxmox VE to manage all virtual machines (VMs) and Linux Containers (LXCs).

---

Hosted Services & Virtualization

Below is a detailed breakdown of the services hosted on the Proxmox environment:

Network & Infrastructure Services

• OPNsense (VM)
  An open-source firewall and routing platform serving as the primary network gateway, managing security policies and internal traffic.

• Tailscale (LXC/VPN)
  A zero-config mesh VPN based on WireGuard. It allows secure, encrypted remote access to the entire homelab environment from anywhere in the world.

• Zoraxy (LXC)
  A modern, feature-rich reverse proxy server managing incoming HTTP/HTTPS traffic, SSL/TLS certificate termination, and subdomain routing to internal services.

• AdGuard Home (LXC)
  A network-wide DNS sinkhole and ad blocker. It blocks advertisements, telemetry, and malicious domains across all connected network devices.

• Portainer (LXC)
  A web-based management UI for Docker container orchestration, simplifying container deployment, log inspection, and monitoring.

Productivity & Documentation

• Trilium Notes (LXC)
  A powerful hierarchical note-taking application and personal knowledge base / wiki used for structuring documentation, technical notes, and research.

Cybersecurity Sandbox & Testing Lab

• Debian & Windows Sandbox VMs
  Isolated virtual machines running Debian and Windows. Designed as a dedicated "crash-test" lab for cybersecurity experimentation, enabling safe execution of Proof-of-Concepts (PoCs), exploit analysis, malware inspection, and security testing in a sandboxed network environment.

Media & Gaming

• Jellyfin (LXC)
  An open-source media server that streams personal movie, TV show, and music libraries across devices.

• Minecraft Server (VM)
  A dedicated multiplayer game server hosting custom Minecraft worlds for friends and gaming sessions.

---

By hosting these services locally, I maintain total privacy and data ownership while building hands-on expertise in networking, virtualization, self-hosting, and cybersecurity.