A Fun Project

Once I move, I've got a fun little project that I've actually begun doing the research for today since I enjoy this kind of thing, especially when it is about open source, Linux, and BSD. I think I got my friend, Jim, intrigued a little by this one. We are actually going to join our networks together over a WireGuard tunnel. But I am going to do something extra intriguing as a part of this project because my side of the network is actually going to be a virtual network and not a physical one. I am showing my geek here.

The geek in me knows that I need a network which I control in order to make this little project happen. The place I will be moving to in a few months will include internet access but I won't have access to the router or any control of the physical network whatsoever. So on my desktop, I will have a virtual network which I will give the IP address scheme of 172.16.128.0/24. This virtual network essentially lives inside the desktop PC but I can also connect physical machines to it with a little bit of wizardry.

I use libvirtd to do all of my Linux virtualization. One of the powerful things of libvirtd is that you can take a physical network card and dedicate for the use by a virtual machine. From there I configure a bridge between it and the virtual network adapter that is in use by the virtual machine. Finally, all I have to do is connect a second PC to that physical network card and it is a member of the virtual network. If it sounds somewhat janky, it is but it should still work. That would give me a true separate network to have complete control over.

Since now we will have a network in place, we are going to need proper local DNS servers so that we won't have to memorize IP addresses. We will be able to use actual machine names. That can be solved by Unbound, a really cool lightweight DNS server or even DNSmasq. Those are two really good options. One DNS server will be at Jim's and one, of course, will be at mine. Better that we each have local DNS so if the tunnel goes down for some reason, we don't lose that ability.

My next step is to do a diagram to help see how this is going to look because it should help clarify things in my mind. I really love researching and tinkering. This is straight up my alley and it's brightening my spirits on a cold rainy day!