The nuts and bolts of networking — from VLANs to VPNs, and DNS to dynamic routing.
SSH tunneling on Ubuntu explained with worked examples. Local forwards (-L), remote forwards (-R), dynamic SOCKS proxies (-D), and when each is the right tool.
SSH Tunneling Explained: Local, Remote, and Dynamic Forwards Read More »
Pi-hole vs AdGuard Home: Which DNS Ad Blocker Should You Use? I have run both. Pi-hole has been my primary DNS filter for over a year, and I spent three months with AdGuard Home running in parallel on a test network to give it a fair evaluation. They solve the same problem. They both work
Pi-hole vs AdGuard Home: Which Should You Use? Read More »
How to Install Pi-hole on Windows (WSL2 Guide) I will be honest upfront: running Pi-hole on Windows via WSL2 is a compromise. It works, and there are legitimate reasons to do it, but it is not the ideal deployment for network-wide DNS filtering. If you have a spare Raspberry Pi, an old laptop, or a
How to Install Pi-hole on Windows (WSL2 Guide) Read More »
How to Run Pi-hole in Docker (DNS Ad Blocking with Docker Compose) If you are already running Docker on your server, putting Pi-hole in a container is the obvious choice. Your DNS service gets the same isolation, portability, and reproducibility as every other service in your stack. You can version control the compose file, blow
How to Run Pi-hole in Docker (Complete Guide) Read More »
How to Install Pi-hole on Ubuntu 24.04 (Network-Wide Ad Blocking Without a Pi) Most Pi-hole guides assume you are running a Raspberry Pi. That is where the name comes from, and it is a perfectly good deployment target. But plenty of people have an Ubuntu server already running in their homelab, or a spare mini
How to Install Pi-hole on Ubuntu 24.04 Read More »
How to Set Up DuckDNS for Free Dynamic DNS (Raspberry Pi and Linux) Before I set up proper internal DNS, DuckDNS was the glue holding my remote access together. I had a Raspberry Pi running a handful of services at home, a residential IP address that changed every few days, and no interest in paying
How to Set Up DuckDNS for Free Dynamic DNS (Raspberry Pi and Linux) Read More »
It was 7:20 PM GMT on November 18, 2025. I was finishing up some configuration changes to ReadTheManual’s self-hosted infrastructure when I noticed something odd: my Cloudflare tunnel had gone dark. No big deal, I thought, probably a blip. Then I checked Twitter. Spotify was down. ChatGPT was offline. Even Trump’s Truth Social had gone
When Hyperscalers Fail: What Three Major Outages Taught Us About Internet Resilience Read More »
Calculate subnet masks, CIDR notation, wildcard masks, and host ranges in seconds. Built for network engineers, system administrators, and anyone configuring IP networks. From the field: I built this because I got tired of doing subnet maths in my head during planning sessions. Whether I am designing an Azure VNet or segmenting my homelab, having
Free IP Subnet Calculator: CIDR, Subnet Masks & Network Planning Read More »
ReadTheManual is the homelab-to-enterprise translation layer for the Technical Climber. Lab to Leader, Ballet to Combat, real projects mapped to real career value. No gatekeeping, just the guides we wished existed when we were climbing.
Welcome to ReadTheManual: Day One of Something Big Read More »
