Tag: networking

nmap for Your Own Network: What You Should Be Scanning

nmap isn't just for pen testers. Learn what's actually worth scanning on your home network and what those open ports really mean.

curl Flags Every Developer Should Know

Master the curl flags that'll save you hours debugging APIs, downloads, and web requests. From -X to --compressed, here's what actually matters.

UFW Advanced: Rate Limiting, Logging, and Rules That Actually Make Sense

Go beyond ufw allow/deny: rate limiting with ufw limit, logging levels, before.rules for iptables, IPv6 handling, Docker bypass fixes, and fail2ban integration.

DDoS Mitigation: Teaching Your Server to Say No Politely (Then Impolitely)

DDoS mitigation for self-hosters: Nginx rate limiting, Fail2ban, Cloudflare free tier, CrowdSec, and iptables tricks that actually work.

Traefik vs Nginx Proxy Manager: Reverse Proxies for Humans

Traefik vs Nginx Proxy Manager compared for self-hosters. Docker auto-discovery, SSL certs, GUI vs labels, performance, and when to pick each reverse proxy.

Why Your TLS Certificate Isn't Trusted

Incomplete cert chains, wrong order, self-signed certs. How to diagnose trust failures with openssl s_client.

The Firewall Rule Order That's Breaking Your Setup

Firewall rules are evaluated top-down, first match wins. One misplaced ALLOW rule above your denials silently defeats all your security. Here's the fix.

Is fail2ban Actually Working? Here's How to Check

Verify fail2ban is protecting you: check jails, test bans, monitor logs, common misconfiguration, and unban IPs when needed.

SSHFS: Ditch SCP & Access Remote Files

SSHFS mounts remote filesystems over SSH so you can browse and edit files locally — faster than scp for interactive work.

Why Your SSH Connection Keeps Dropping

Fix SSH timeouts: ServerAliveInterval, ServerAliveCountMax, ClientAliveInterval. Understand NAT, firewalls, and TCP keepalive.

lsof: The Tool That Shows You Everything

Master lsof to find port conflicts, trace deleted files eating disk, and debug network connections.

Finding the PID of a Process Using a Specific Port in Linux

Something's squatting on port 8080 and you need to know what. ss, netstat, and lsof one-liners to find the PID behind a port fast.