Building a Home Network Lab.md

Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIFKmJ4wufc

• Set up lab router -- simple $60 linksys router can work well enough -- run cable from the wifi router to the lab router
• All devices in the lab go behind the lab router
  • Otherwise can cause DNS/DHCP conflicts & general chaos across the rest of the home network
  • Isolate the lab behind this internal router to avoid conflicts
• Lab network must be on different subnet than the main home network
  • Because router is for routing between different subnets
  • So if labnet is on same subnet as homenet then router can't route properly
  • If homenet is on NAT network space 192.168.1.x then router's external port must be on the same network, e.g. have IP such as 192.168.1.2
    • Then labnet should be on for example 192.168.2.x so it is on separate subnet
    • If we nest another router inside the labnet then it's external has to be on labnet's LAN e.g. 192.168.2.2 but the internal IP space needs to be a separate subnet e.g. 192.168.3.x

Exposing services from the lab network to the home network or the internet

Use port forwarding to get external ports to the internal lab systems

Ex: to have port 80 on a lab server exposed to the internet, forward port 80 from the wifi router to the lab router and then forward that port again from the lab router to the lab server

Active Directory

If setting up Win2012 Server with Active Directory it requires DNS and DHCP be turned on as well, so turn off DHCP on the router to avoid conflicts!