Nathan Reynolds

Yes, you absolutely can use a mini PC as a firewall. A 4-port firewall mini PC is a compact x86 computer with four physical Ethernet ports that runs software like OPNsense or pfSense to handle routing, VLAN segmentation, and WAN/LAN separation in one quiet, low-power box. Our team spent the last three months testing 10 … Read more

If your ISP just upgraded you to 2Gbps, 5Gbps, or even 10Gbps fiber, your old consumer router is now the weakest link in your network. I have spent the last few months building, swapping, and benchmarking different DIY router hardware for multi-gig connections, and the gap between off-the-shelf consumer gear and a custom-built routing box … Read more

Smart homes have quietly become networking nightmares. I started noticing it two years ago when my own house hit 47 connected devices: six smart bulbs lagging, the video doorbell dropping frames, the robot vacuum losing connection mid-run, and a Home Assistant instance that took 14 seconds to respond. The router I had been running since … Read more

I have been running UniFi gear in my own home and a small office for the last four years, and the single upgrade that changed my network the most was swapping consumer routers for proper PoE access points. Once I dropped an AP on the ceiling, ran a single Ethernet cable to it, and adopted … Read more

After spending 90 days testing eight mesh systems across three home labs running Plex, Home Assistant, and Pi-hole, I can tell you that the best mesh Wi-Fi system for a self-hosted network is not the same as the best mesh for casual streaming. Self-hosted environments push routers harder, demand VLAN support, and absolutely refuse to … Read more

Picking the best 10GbE network card for a TrueNAS server used to be straightforward. Grab an Intel X520-DA2 off eBay, plug it in, and call it a day. After three months of testing 10 different cards across TrueNAS SCALE 24.10 and CORE 13, I can tell you the picture has changed. New Realtek and Marvell … Read more

I have rebuilt the 10G link between my rack switch and NAS more times than I can count, and the single cheapest upgrade I ever made was swapping transceiver pairs for a proper SFP+ DAC cable. If you are linking a NAS to a switch inside the same rack, a direct attach copper cable gives … Read more

When your home lab outgrows the four ports on the back of your router, you start looking for the best 24-port gigabit switch for a home server rack, and that search gets confusing fast. Every manufacturer claims silent operation, rack compatibility, and gigabit speeds, yet the real differences show up months later in noise levels, … Read more

If you only need to power one IP camera, buying a PoE switch feels like overkill. A single-port PoE injector sits between your existing switch and the camera, pushes 48V down the same Ethernet cable that carries data, and saves you from running a separate power outlet to the wall. I have installed single camera … Read more

When I set up my first home IDS stack, I wanted to see every packet flowing between my router and switch without dropping a single one. That is exactly what the right network tap delivers. In this roundup of the best network tap for monitoring home traffic, I walk through eight devices I have either … Read more