Whether you’re video streaming, gaming, conference calling, or doing other productivity tasks, a solid internet connection is essential in the modern age. And although Wi-fi has come a long way, nothing compares to the minimal latency and reliability of old-fashioned wired networking. That is why I decided to set up wired networking throughout my house.

When learning about different systems and experimenting with technologies, it can be extremely helpful to have a virtual machine server to experiment with. Here I detail the steps I took to get my Virtual machines up and running, which allowed me to lab and prepare for exams such as the CCNA and the Cybersecurity Analyst+.

Why pay every month for cloud storage when you can get way more storage for a fixed cost instead? My journey to setting up a Network Attached Storage was full of time-consuming failures. I learned a lot along the way and I am glad I eventually found a stable and reliable solution.

There are plenty of simple web hosting solutions in the modern day. But the best way to have full control of your system while still having the flexibility and reliability of the cloud, is to manually configure a web server using a cloud solution. That's how the first iteration of JChapa.com was made! This links to my blog post explaining in detail how to do that, and it leverages Google's Cloud Platform, Nginx, and MariaDB.

Hosting my own VPN endpoint has been by far the most utilitarian project that I have taken on. It allows me to stay safe and anonymous, access my homelab from anywhere, and filter all my mobile traffic through my DNS sinkhole. It also allowed me to learn and experiment with many different server and networking technologies.