For years, UniFi Protect has been one of the most popular surveillance systems for home lab enthusiasts and small businesses.
It looks great.
The interface is polished.
And the integration with UniFi networking gear is seamless.
But over the past few years, a noticeable shift has started happening in the home lab and self-hosted communities.
Network engineer with a focus on Azure, Microsoft 365, identity, and modern infrastructure.
I build, break, and document systems so I can rebuild them better.
But this site is more than a bio, it’s a living record of my journey.
Because while my day job lives in the cloud, my real learning often starts at home, in the rack, behind the firewall, inside the lab.
I created this site for a simple reason:
If you’ve made it this far, chances are we have something in common.
Maybe you’re building a home lab that started as “just a spare PC” and somehow turned into a rack.
Maybe you’re tuning pfSense rules at midnight trying to figure out why VLAN 30 won’t talk to VLAN 10.
Maybe you’re spinning up another Proxmox node because “this time I’ll document it properly.”
Or maybe you’re deep in Azure networking and Conditional Access policies at 11:47 PM wondering why one test account refuses to cooperate.
Most home networks are flat.
One LAN. One WiFi. Everything trusts everything.
Your laptop can talk to your smart bulbs. Your TV can talk to your NAS. Your IoT camera can reach your workstation.
That’s not a lab. That’s a liability.
If you want a home lab that actually teaches real networking, segmentation, routing, firewall policy, and security boundaries, you need a real firewall.
Key principle:
Terminate TLS at a single reverse proxy.
Expose one entry point.
Keep everything else internal.
That’s discipline.
This isn’t about running Plex on better hardware.
This is about understanding:
You can buy ecosystems.