Setting up home network.

[Ethan_yvormes]

I recently have been given some older equipment to play around with to create a home lab with more than just some VMs. Im not sure if my Google skills are failing me or if I have just gotten blinders on and not realized that the water is in front of the horse. I want to mess around with programs like Wireshark, snort, pi-hole, etc. on a network scale. My limited networking understanding makes sense to me that I would need a computer (VM) running each program or multiple but then having all of the network traffic passing through those machines to monitor the entire network's activity. Am I off my rocker and just have a gross concept error or just slightly misguided on how I think these programs work? I can provide a picture if needed of what I have in my head however I haven't created an actual network map yet. I should add as well that I want to use Opnsense on one of the VMs and possibly other security software as I learn more about networking. 

[ieleja]

I recommend to start your experiments with 2+ real, physical, no virtual "machines", because virtualization adds another abstraction level to your network infrastructure.

 

Internet --- [router/switch] --- (2 or more computers attached)

[Ethan_yvormes]

I will try that however for what I am trying to do with different programs running do I need to put them in series so:

 

Internet----router/switch-----Wireshark------firewall-------vpn------switch------home computers

 

or can I do this

 

internet------router/switch-----(all ports used on switch) Machine for wireshark, firewall, vpn, and other computers. 

 

With the second one will the computer running wireshark will still see the traffic going to and from my other computers and will the firewall and vpn protect the computers. 

 

In electrical terms do i need to run things in series or will parallel work and still provide me protection.