4 ms·

Hey how can i learn more about all this? id love to understand whates going on, on the github page, im following a bit but still want a better understanding the

Hey how can i learn more about all this? id love to understand whates going on, on the github page, im following a bit but still want a better understanding the way you and the rest of the commenters have, what are some good starting points? Any resources, books, links, youtubes especially, that you can point me to? Also, in his set up, theres no router? He says hes using a VM? What does that mean?

gerdesj 8y ago
It is a complex subject. pfSense is Open Source and IMNSHO the best Swiss Army knife of routers/firewalls. Download this: https://www.pfsense.org/download/ https://www.pfsense.org/download/ Have a read of this: https://www.netgate.com/docs/pfsense/ https://www.netgate.com/docs/pfsense/ Hang out here: https://forum.netgate.com/ https://forum.netgate.com/ The VM is a router. Provided you ensure that traffic has to go through the VM and that the VM is able to route etc then it is a router 8) OP is using Linux whereas pfSense is FreeBSD based but pfSense is pretty much the only (near enough) turnkey product that does multi WAN and CARP properly. I should mention OPNsense as well here for fairness.
- ktta 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure this went over their head (don't intend to be mean). I believe they asked, what a VM actually stands for and what is means, rather than what it's for.
  - gerdesj 8y ago
    Fair enough. For a laugh I searched for "vm" and got a wikipedia article on virtual machines. GP did ask for rather a lot of clarification but then you (we) still have to allow for those times when someone just does not get it, despite everything. For example, I'm diving into Home Assistant, I don't think I'm daft but I ended up posting what turned out to be a really silly request for help because I was not a local and used to the scenery. I'd read all the docs, which I will soon subtly alter, but missed an implied (if you knew the system) point. How the heck do you describe what a VM router does, quickly? 8)
- Forbin 8y ago
  Pfsense has problems when running in kvm.https://www.netgate.com/docs/pfsense/virtualization/virtio-driver-support.html https://www.netgate.com/docs/pfsense/virtualization/virtio-d... and https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/7tsppj/pfsense_performance_issues_in_proxmox/ https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/7tsppj/pfsense_per...
  - tjoff 8y ago
    Works fine in xen and esxi though.
ktta 8y ago
>Hey how can i learn more about all this? Go to your router's config page, and google all the words/acronyms you don't know. Read the Wikipedia pages too. That should put you in a position where you can ask better questions. Router is a generic term for something that takes wired Ethernet and performs NAT and creates a wifi network( something an access point aka AP does). The NAT here is handled by a different device(the by the 'VM', which is a program that runs an entire OS by simulating a computer) and the AP here is multiple UniFi devices[1]. I would say get familiar with googling technical terms, because there won't always be someone willing to answer questions [1]:https://github.com/bradfitz/homelab#wi-fi-aps https://github.com/bradfitz/homelab#wi-fi-aps
- cat199 8y ago
  > Router is a generic term for something that takes wired Ethernet and performs NAT and creates a wifi network not to nitpick, but this not actually true. for home use, perhaps it is conflated to mean this, but really it is one machine that reroutes traffic on behalf of another - NAT/wifi or other media transformation is not necessarily required here (though definitely could be a part of it)
JustSomeNobody 8y ago
Reddit. /r/homelab
jschwartzi 8y ago
Well a router takes a packet from one of its interfaces and uses the Internet Protocol address encoded in the packet header to determine which of its interfaces to forward the packet to based on the preconfigured destination subnet for the interface. Most home routers only have two interfaces and two subnetworks. Most people are familiar with home routers which do Network Address Translation and have a built in Wireless access point. Neither of those things are required for something to be a router. In fact routers with IPv6 support do not perform NAT between your local network and the Internet for IPv6. Similarly, DHCP, DNS, and various other things that home routers do can actually be handled by totally separate hosts on the network. That's what he's doing. If you're looking for more information about how networking works, I would highly recommend Computer Networks by Andrew Tanenbaum. It's more abstract than the typical "Understand TCP/IP in 600 pages" books that are available but it provides a good high-level overview of how networking works, what protocols matter, and how everything fits together. Edit: When he says he's using VMs, he means that he's using Virtual Machines to run multiple operating systems on the same server. Each of these operating systems runs one or more servers for DHCP or DNS or other networking services. I assume that he's using his virtualization platform to mirror the virtual machines between his servers and provide hot spares, so that if one VM goes down another spare can step in.

gerdesj 8y ago

It is a complex subject. pfSense is Open Source and IMNSHO the best Swiss Army knife of routers/firewalls. Download this: https://www.pfsense.org/download/ https://www.pfsense.org/download/ Have a read of this: https://www.netgate.com/docs/pfsense/ https://www.netgate.com/docs/pfsense/ Hang out here: https://forum.netgate.com/ https://forum.netgate.com/ The VM is a router. Provided you ensure that traffic has to go through the VM and that the VM is able to route etc then it is a router 8) OP is using Linux whereas pfSense is FreeBSD based but pfSense is pretty much the only (near enough) turnkey product that does multi WAN and CARP properly. I should mention OPNsense as well here for fairness.

ktta 8y ago
I'm pretty sure this went over their head (don't intend to be mean). I believe they asked, what a VM actually stands for and what is means, rather than what it's for.
- gerdesj 8y ago
  Fair enough. For a laugh I searched for "vm" and got a wikipedia article on virtual machines. GP did ask for rather a lot of clarification but then you (we) still have to allow for those times when someone just does not get it, despite everything. For example, I'm diving into Home Assistant, I don't think I'm daft but I ended up posting what turned out to be a really silly request for help because I was not a local and used to the scenery. I'd read all the docs, which I will soon subtly alter, but missed an implied (if you knew the system) point. How the heck do you describe what a VM router does, quickly? 8)
Forbin 8y ago
Pfsense has problems when running in kvm.https://www.netgate.com/docs/pfsense/virtualization/virtio-driver-support.html https://www.netgate.com/docs/pfsense/virtualization/virtio-d... and https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/7tsppj/pfsense_performance_issues_in_proxmox/ https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/7tsppj/pfsense_per...
- tjoff 8y ago
  Works fine in xen and esxi though.

ktta 8y ago

>Hey how can i learn more about all this? Go to your router's config page, and google all the words/acronyms you don't know. Read the Wikipedia pages too. That should put you in a position where you can ask better questions. Router is a generic term for something that takes wired Ethernet and performs NAT and creates a wifi network( something an access point aka AP does). The NAT here is handled by a different device(the by the 'VM', which is a program that runs an entire OS by simulating a computer) and the AP here is multiple UniFi devices[1]. I would say get familiar with googling technical terms, because there won't always be someone willing to answer questions [1]:https://github.com/bradfitz/homelab#wi-fi-aps https://github.com/bradfitz/homelab#wi-fi-aps

cat199 8y ago
> Router is a generic term for something that takes wired Ethernet and performs NAT and creates a wifi network not to nitpick, but this not actually true. for home use, perhaps it is conflated to mean this, but really it is one machine that reroutes traffic on behalf of another - NAT/wifi or other media transformation is not necessarily required here (though definitely could be a part of it)

JustSomeNobody 8y ago

Reddit. /r/homelab

jschwartzi 8y ago

Well a router takes a packet from one of its interfaces and uses the Internet Protocol address encoded in the packet header to determine which of its interfaces to forward the packet to based on the preconfigured destination subnet for the interface. Most home routers only have two interfaces and two subnetworks. Most people are familiar with home routers which do Network Address Translation and have a built in Wireless access point. Neither of those things are required for something to be a router. In fact routers with IPv6 support do not perform NAT between your local network and the Internet for IPv6. Similarly, DHCP, DNS, and various other things that home routers do can actually be handled by totally separate hosts on the network. That's what he's doing. If you're looking for more information about how networking works, I would highly recommend Computer Networks by Andrew Tanenbaum. It's more abstract than the typical "Understand TCP/IP in 600 pages" books that are available but it provides a good high-level overview of how networking works, what protocols matter, and how everything fits together. Edit: When he says he's using VMs, he means that he's using Virtual Machines to run multiple operating systems on the same server. Each of these operating systems runs one or more servers for DHCP or DNS or other networking services. I assume that he's using his virtualization platform to mirror the virtual machines between his servers and provide hot spares, so that if one VM goes down another spare can step in.