Wow that doesn’t look like Xqc at all, terrible job

I really appreciate all your input, its really helped me connect a few dots that needed connecting so I really do appreciate it my man. I’m aware of the OSI model and I was hoping my work with my homelab would help me understand better, but I’ve still got a ways to go. I really appreciate your explanations on Layer 2 and Layer 3, I understood the definitions but your explanation helps me connect the idea to real world examples. I also understood bridges somewhat but relating it to a switch makes it simple to understand and configure.

Thanks for the links as well, I will be messing around with this config tonight so I will be using your comments as a resource, so really, thank you! Can I ask for permission to PM you if I have any questions related to homelab/networking? You and I seem very similar in our scatterbrain-ness lol, so I figured it might make things easier if that makes sense. I will definitely be doing more reading and research, the first link you provided seems like an absolute blessing of a resource.

Dude this is awesome, thanks for your comment! It’s exactly the type of engagement I was hoping for, someone to help with a few key concepts. I’ll definitely be taking your advice to heart it sounds like you’ve been through the ringer with your own setup

I agree with you that running OPNsense in a VM is less than ideal but I figured as it would only affect my lab, I can deal with the occasional outage and this is more so I can learn first before going all in on a solution such as a netgate, I appreciate the suggestion there too. I’m not dead set on OPNsense I just figured a gui would be easier to navigate and it looked nice. I haven’t heard of suricata and mirroring WAN connection to pfsense, that definitely makes sense.

As for the VLANs I’m not dead set on that in particular either, the switch I have supported it and it made the most sense as to how to segment my network in that way. So you are saying you can also segment a LAN connection with just a firewall? It would make sense as you can set rules as to how a device can communicate with other devices on the network, is it rather cumbersome to set it up in that way? And on VLAN performance I would assume that would not be a problem as I am the only user who would be connecting to my media server, unless I had a bunch of services sending and receiving shitloads of data essentially?

I really appreciate all your help! You definitely sound like you’ve been doing this for a decade haha, very useful stuff. I might pop back and ask more questions later if you don’t mind