Tag: home lab

Passion, opinion, questions, chaos. It’s all here.

  • Home Lab Failure Recovery & CISSP Lessons from a VLAN Misconfiguration

    Home Lab Failure Recovery & CISSP Lessons from a VLAN Misconfiguration

    A single VLAN misconfiguration triggered a full network blackout in my home lab—no router, no hypervisor, no recovery. Even Kali Linux couldn’t save me. But this wasn’t just a technical failure—it was a masterclass in resilience, disaster recovery, and applying CISSP principles in real time. As I prepare for my CISSP exam (Winter 2025), I’m…


  • 5 Reasons Policy-Based Routing in Multi-NIC VMs Solves Asymmetric Routing Issues

    5 Reasons Policy-Based Routing in Multi-NIC VMs Solves Asymmetric Routing Issues

    A multi-NIC VM in my home lab became unreachable from some VLANs due to asymmetric routing—replying via the wrong interface and triggering security drops. Implementing policy-based routing fixed this by ensuring responses use the same path they arrived on, maintaining strict security without disabling protections like reverse path filtering. This reinforced key CISSP principles like…


  • Why DHCP Snooping Could Save Your Network: A Networking Mistake Learned the Hard Way

    Why DHCP Snooping Could Save Your Network: A Networking Mistake Learned the Hard Way

    After setting up VLANs for a segmented network, I learned the hard way how neglecting DHCP snooping can lead to unexpected IP allocation issues. By properly configuring DHCP snooping, I ensured the network’s security and stability. This experience reinforced the importance of validating every configuration to prevent small mistakes from turning into major issues.