Learning about slightly more advanced networking with linux

Paul Warren

Mastodon: @pwarren@mastodon.thewarrens.name

email: paul at thewarrens.name

© 2021 Paul Warren

CC BY-NC-SA

! WARNING !

I am not a network engineer, there are gaps in my knowledge

The words I use might not be the correct ones

Please don't blame me if your network stops networking

Maybe don't go and try building an ISP based off this talk :)

How it started

One subnet

Standard tech shop router with defaults

Made mistakes that broke critical applications

So where to from here?

linux can do VLANs, lets see if that helps!

What even is a network

Ethernet?

Token Ring?

IPX?

AX.25?

What even is a network

ipv4?

ipv6?

tcp?

Allows connections between computers

Managed network?

Controls connections between computers

Scales connections between computers

Layers!

Like an onion!

That 7 layer thing from the OSI

Administrative overlays

VPNs/Tunnelled

The Problems

VLAN

OSPF

more detail on what VLANs, OSPF and BGP are for
how to do these things in linux
intro to bird
more detail on bird
building out a virtual network with LXC
ergh, NAT
Why use a 'real' router
OpenWRT

Resources

These slides: https://gitea.pwarren.id.au/pwarren/SysAdmin2022

bird: https://bird.network.cz

KNorrie's network examples: https://github.com/knorrie/network-examples

Openwrt: https://openwrt.org/

The OpenWRT IRC channel, currently on the OFTC network