https://www.pistack.xyz/tags/networking/Recent content in Networking on Pi StackHugoen-usTue, 21 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/2026-04-21-flannel-vs-calico-vs-cilium-self-hosted-kubernetes-cni-guide-2026/Tue, 21 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/2026-04-21-flannel-vs-calico-vs-cilium-self-hosted-kubernetes-cni-guide-2026/<p>Every Kubernetes cluster needs a Container Network Interface (CNI) plugin to handle pod-to-pod communication, service discovery, and network policy enforcement. Choosing the right CNI is one of the most impactful infrastructure decisions you&rsquo;ll make — it affects network performance, security posture, operational complexity, and the features available to your workloads.</p>https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/2026-04-20-ipxe-vs-netboot-xyz-vs-fog-project-self-hosted-pxe-network-boot-guide-2026/Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/2026-04-20-ipxe-vs-netboot-xyz-vs-fog-project-self-hosted-pxe-network-boot-guide-2026/<p>Bare-metal server provisioning and network-based OS installation remain essential skills for any homelab or enterprise infrastructure. Instead of physically swapping USB drives between machines, <strong>Preboot eXecution Environment (PXE)</strong> lets you boot and install operating systems entirely over the network.</p>https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/2026-04-20-phpipam-vs-nipap-vs-netbox-self-hosted-ipam-guide-2026/Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/2026-04-20-phpipam-vs-nipap-vs-netbox-self-hosted-ipam-guide-2026/<p>Managing IP addresses across growing networks is one of those tasks that seems simple until a spreadsheet starts conflicting with reality. When your organization runs dozens of subnets, VLANs, and DHCP scopes, a proper IP Address Management (IPAM) system stops being a luxury and becomes a necessity.</p>https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/2026-04-19-frrouting-vs-bird-vs-openbgpd-self-hosted-bgp-routing-guide-2026/Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/2026-04-19-frrouting-vs-bird-vs-openbgpd-self-hosted-bgp-routing-guide-2026/<p>Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the routing protocol that glues the internet together. It decides how traffic flows between autonomous systems — the networks operated by ISPs, cloud providers, and large enterprises. But BGP isn&rsquo;t just for tier-1 providers anymore. Homelab enthusiasts, small ISPs, and self-hosting communities increasingly run their own BGP setups for multi-homing, peering exchanges, and overlay network integration.</p>https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/librespeed-vs-speedtest-tracker-vs-openspeedtest-self-hosted-network-speed-testing-2026/Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/librespeed-vs-speedtest-tracker-vs-openspeedtest-self-hosted-network-speed-testing-2026/<p>Internet speed tests are everywhere — but every time you click &ldquo;Go&rdquo; on a commercial speed test site, your results contribute to someone else&rsquo;s dataset. Your ISP&rsquo;s actual throughput, your connection latency, your peak and off-peak performance patterns — all harvested. For homelab operators, network administrators, and privacy-conscious users, running a self-hosted speed test server puts that data back under your control.</p>https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/oxidized-vs-netmiko-vs-napalm-network-config-backup-automation-2026/Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/oxidized-vs-netmiko-vs-napalm-network-config-backup-automation-2026/<p>Managing network device configurations manually is a recipe for disaster. When a router goes down at 2 AM, the last thing you want is guessing what changed since last week. Self-hosted network configuration backup and automation tools solve this by pulling configs on schedule, tracking diffs, and enabling automated changes across multi-vendor environments.</p>https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/2026-04-19-packetfence-vs-freeradius-vs-coovachilli-self-hosted-nac-guide-2026/Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/2026-04-19-packetfence-vs-freeradius-vs-coovachilli-self-hosted-nac-guide-2026/<p>Network Access Control (NAC) is one of the most critical security layers for any organization that manages physical or wireless networks. Without it, any device with an Ethernet cable or WiFi password can join your network and access resources freely. NAC solutions enforce authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) — verifying who is connecting, what they&rsquo;re allowed to access, and logging their activity.</p>https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/ddclient-vs-ddns-updater-vs-inadyn-self-hosted-ddns-guide-2026/Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/ddclient-vs-ddns-updater-vs-inadyn-self-hosted-ddns-guide-2026/<p>If you run a self-hosted server from home — a media server, a personal cloud, a home automation hub, or any service you want to reach from the internet — you face one universal problem: most residential ISPs assign <strong>dynamic IP addresses</strong> that change periodically. When your IP changes, your DNS record points to the wrong address and your services go offline.</p>https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/frp-vs-chisel-vs-rathole-self-hosted-tunnel-ngrok-alternatives-2026/Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/frp-vs-chisel-vs-rathole-self-hosted-tunnel-ngrok-alternatives-2026/<p>When you need to expose a local service — a development server, a self-hosted application, or an internal API — to the public internet, tunneling tools are the answer. Commercial services like ngrok made this popular, but they come with bandwidth limits, paid tiers, and the requirement to route your traffic through a third-party server.</p>https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/2026-04-18-gns3-vs-eve-ng-vs-containerlab-self-hosted-network-simulation-2026/Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/2026-04-18-gns3-vs-eve-ng-vs-containerlab-self-hosted-network-simulation-2026/<h2 id="why-self-host-your-network-lab">Why Self-Host Your Network Lab?</h2> <p>Network engineers, students preparing for certifications, and DevOps teams building infrastructure need reliable environments to test topologies, validate configurations, and prototype architectures before touching production hardware. Commercial network simulation platforms like Cisco Packet Tracer or proprietary cloud-based labs come with limitations — restricted device support, session timeouts, and recurring subscription costs.</p>https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/2026-04-18-powerdns-vs-bind9-vs-nsd-vs-knot-self-hosted-authoritative-dns-2026/Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/2026-04-18-powerdns-vs-bind9-vs-nsd-vs-knot-self-hosted-authoritative-dns-2026/<p>When you own a domain, someone has to answer the question: &ldquo;What IP does this domain point to?&rdquo; That someone is an <strong>authoritative DNS server</strong>. Unlike recursive resolvers (which look up answers on your behalf), authoritative servers hold the actual zone files and provide the definitive answers to DNS queries for your domains.</p>https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/self-hosted-bittorrent-trackers-chihaya-torrust-webtorrent-guide-2026/Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/self-hosted-bittorrent-trackers-chihaya-torrust-webtorrent-guide-2026/<p>A BitTorrent tracker is the central coordinator that helps peers discover each other in the BitTorrent protocol. Without a tracker, torrent clients rely solely on Distributed Hash Tables (DHT) and peer exchange — which work fine for popular torrents but are unreliable for niche or private content.</p>https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/strongswan-vs-libreswan-vs-softether-self-hosted-vpn-gateway-guide-2026/Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/strongswan-vs-libreswan-vs-softether-self-hosted-vpn-gateway-guide-2026/<p>When you need a self-hosted VPN gateway for site-to-site connectivity, remote access, or secure network bridging, the choice of VPN software matters. While tools like <a href="https://www.wireguard.com/">wireguard</a> and OpenVPN dominate the consumer space, enterprise-grade deployments often require the flexibility and proven security of IPSec or multi-protocol VPN solutions.</p>https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/self-hosted-dhcp-servers-kea-dnsmasq-isc-dhcp-guide-2026/Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/self-hosted-dhcp-servers-kea-dnsmasq-isc-dhcp-guide-2026/<p>Running your own DHCP server gives you full control over IP address assignment, DNS resolution, and network boot operations. Whether you manage a homelab with dozens of devices or an enterprise network spanning multiple VLANs, choosing the right DHCP server is one of the most foundational decisions you&rsquo;ll make.</p>https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/ebpf-networking-observability-cilium-pixie-tetragon-guide-2026/Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/ebpf-networking-observability-cilium-pixie-tetragon-guide-2026/<p>The eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter) revolution has fundamentally changed how we observe, secure, and manage network infrastructure. Born from the Linux kernel, eBPF allows sandboxed programs to run inside the kernel without modifying kernel source code or loading modules. This means you can intercept network packets, trace system calls, monitor application performance, and enforce security policies — all with near-zero overhead and no instrumentation changes to your applications.</p>https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/self-hosted-turn-stun-servers-coturn-restund-pion-webrtc-guide-2026/Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/self-hosted-turn-stun-servers-coturn-restund-pion-webrtc-guide-2026/<p>Every self-hosted real-time communication setup eventually hits the same wall: NAT. Whether you&rsquo;re running Jitsi Meet, <a href="https://nextcloud.com/">nextcloud</a> Talk, a Matrix homeserver with VoIP, or a custom WebRTC application, roughly 20–30% of connections will fail without a TURN relay. STUN helps devices discover their public addresses, but when symmetric NATs or strict firewalls block direct peer-to-peer traffic, you need a TURN server to relay media.</p>https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/self-hosted-overlay-networks-zerotier-nebula-netmaker-guide-2026/Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/self-hosted-overlay-networks-zerotier-nebula-netmaker-guide-2026/<p>Connecting servers, laptops, and IoT devices across the internet as if they were on the same local network used to require com<a href="https://www.plex.tv/">plex</a> VPN setups, port forwarding, and static IPs. In 2026, overlay network technologies make this trivial — but most people still rely on centralized, proprietary services that can see your network topology, throttle your bandwidth, or shut down without warning.</p>https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/self-hosted-network-traffic-analysis-zeek-arkime-ntopng-guide-2026/Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/self-hosted-network-traffic-analysis-zeek-arkime-ntopng-guide-2026/<p>Network visibility is the foundation of effective infrastructure management. Whether you are diagnosing a stubborn latency issue, investigating a potential intrusion, auditing data flows for compliance, or simply understanding what traverses your network, a self-hosted traffic analysis platform gives you full access to the raw data without shipping packets to a third-party cloud.</p>https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/self-hosted-webhook-relay-tunnel-guide/Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/self-hosted-webhook-relay-tunnel-guide/<p>Developers constantly need to expose local services to the internet — for testing webhooks, demonstrating work-in-progress to clients, collaborating on APIs, or debugging integrations with external platforms. ngrok became the default solution for this, but its free tier comes with limitations: random URLs, session timeouts, connection caps, and an opaque middleman seeing all your traffic.</p>https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/zabbix-vs-librenms-vs-netdata-network-monitoring-guide/Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/zabbix-vs-librenms-vs-netdata-network-monitoring-guide/<h2 id="why-self-host-your-network-monitoring">Why Self-Host Your Network Monitoring?</h2> <p>Commercial network monitoring platforms charge per-device licensing fees, cap data retention, and ship your infrastructure telemetry to third-party clouds. Self-hosting your monitoring stack gives you full control over every metric, alert, and dashboard:</p>https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/self-hosted-vpn-solutions-wireguard-openvpn-tailscale-guide/Sun, 12 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/self-hosted-vpn-solutions-wireguard-openvpn-tailscale-guide/<p>Virtual Private Networks remain the backbone of secure remote access, site-to-site connectivity, and privacy-preserving network architectures. In 2026, the landscape has shifted significantly — WireGuard has matured into the default choice for new deployments, while open-source alternatives to proprietary mesh networks have finally reached production readiness. This guide covers the three most relevant self-hosted VPN solutions you can run today, with complete setup instructions for each.</p>https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/self-hosted-firewall-ufw-firewalld-iptables/Sun, 12 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/self-hosted-firewall-ufw-firewalld-iptables/<h2 id="why-a-proper-firewall-is-non-negotiable-for-self-hosted-servers">Why a Proper Firewall Is Non-Negotiable for Self-Hosted Servers</h2> <p>Every self-hosted server is exposed to the internet — and the internet is noisy. Within minutes of connecting a fresh VPS, you&rsquo;ll see SSH brute-force attempts, port scans, and automated exploit probes in your logs. A properly configured firewall is your first and most critical line of defense.</p>https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/headscale-self-host-tailscale-guide/Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pistack.xyz/posts/headscale-self-host-tailscale-guide/<h2 id="why-self-host-a-mesh-vpn">Why Self-Host a Mesh VPN?</h2> <p>Modern infrastructure is distributed. You have servers in the cloud, a homelab in your garage, a laptop at a coffee shop, and maybe a Raspberry Pi monitoring your garden. Connecting all of these securely without opening firewall ports or managing WireGuard by hand is where mesh VPNs shine.</p>