NetworkingHardware

So, What network hardware do I have experience with... at Candia Holdings we used HP Enterprise switches, however, that was a production environment and if I made a mistake a lot of people would be very angry. Not an environment conducive to testing and experimenting. The solution? Get some enterprise grade hardware and build a real network in my house.

Everyone knows that off the shelf wifi is trash and I wanted the best. A lot of people (me amongst them) consider the Unifi AP's to be the best on the market so that is what I wanted in my home. I also wanted to be able to manage my network from a single pane of glass. I started with a Unifi Dream Machine Pro and a UAP-AC-LR (the Unifi's long range wifi hot spot). I learned how to set up a wifi network, vLANs and even allowing VPN access using IPSEC and RADIUS. All from scratch.

Eventually, I ran out of room on the 8port switch that is built into the UDMpro so I expanded it and added a USW-Pro-48-PoE (go big or go home, right?). Now that I had a bit of room to play with, I was able to add to my server collection and really start to learn about networking. I recently added a Cisco WSC3560V2-48PS-SCatalyst3560V2 48-10/100 PoE +4-SFP to the collection to learn the Cisco management console and potentially add a CCNA to my resume.