Building A Home Network Part 1: "What should I even build?"

I've recently started watching a lot of videos of DIY projects which revolve around repurposing old laptops/PCs into brand new home servers and I was struck with inspiration!

There's only one problem: Where do I start? What should I even build?

There's so many different projects I can sink my teeth into and yet I'm not really fussed about which one to start with.

Here are some options:

• Web server - I've already got this website, and if I really wanted to build one from scratch, I can aways host it myself on my AWS account. Would be good to learn how to manage a http server like Apache or Nginx.

• Media server - Can try installing Plex so that I have a place to access all my media (If I had any...).
• Network Attached Storage (NAS) - This one... might actually be useful...
• Messaging Server - Personal chat room where I can privately chat with all my friends.

The list goes on and on!

My Answer

After some deliberation, I've decided that I want to create a home network that I can (ethically) hack!

And in the meantime I can learn networking concepts along the way.

I can install a bunch of windows servers and learn about active directory - although, I might leave that for when I start learning Microsoft Azure.

But now, the web server idea doesn't sounds so bad. I can download an old version of Apache and search the vulnerability databases for an exploit.

Can try and create a reverse shell, and follow it up learning privilege escalation to give myself root access.

Can blacklist certain machines on the network and get past it using mack address spoofing.

Can monitor network between two machine with wireshark.

The ideas are endless!

But before any of that, I have to build a network.

Either way, I'm excited to see where this goes! Hopefully, I can build something cool and entertain you along the way, so if you're interested, I'll see you in the next one!