BreadLab documentation

Lab Notes

Project writeups, setup guides, and technical breakdowns from BreadLab.

July 2, 2026 homelabdockernetworking

Networking Basics #4: Reverse Proxies — One nginx Front Door for a Dozen Containers

Learn how to use a single nginx instance as a reverse proxy to route traffic to multiple Docker containers.

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July 2, 2026 homelabnetworkingdns

Networking Basics #2: DNS — How breadtoasting.com Actually Resolves

Dive into the intricacies of DNS with `breadtoasting.com` as a real-world example. Learn about record types, TTLs, and how Cloudflare enhances privacy.

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July 2, 2026 homelabnetworkingmonitoring

Networking Basics #10: Monitoring and Health Checks — Knowing It's Down Before a Customer Does

How BreadLab knows a service is down before anyone tells us: health endpoints, caching, and honest status.

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July 2, 2026 homelabnetworkinggame servers

Networking Basics #9: Latency vs Bandwidth — Why Game Servers Care About Milliseconds

Learn about the critical difference between bandwidth and latency in your home lab, especially for game hosting.

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July 2, 2026 homelabnetworkingtlshttps

Networking Basics #7: TLS and HTTPS — What the Padlock Does for breadtoasting.com

Learn about TLS/HTTPS, from encryption to authentication, and how it's implemented on my homelab setup.

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July 2, 2026 homelabnetworkingcloudflare

Networking Basics #6: Cloudflare Tunnels vs Open Ports (and the Two-Cloudflared 502 Mystery)

Discover why Breadtoasting.com uses Cloudflare tunnels instead of opening inbound ports, and how a misconfiguration led to intermittent errors.

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July 2, 2026 homelabdockernetworking

Networking Basics #5: Docker Networking — Why Containers Talk to Each Other by Name

Learn how containers in a user-defined bridge network can communicate using names, and why this setup is more secure than hardcoding IP addresses.

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July 2, 2026 homelabnetworkingnatport forwarding

Networking Basics #3: NAT and Port Forwarding — How Game Servers Survive Behind a Home Router

Learn how Network Address Translation (NAT) and port forwarding enable game servers to operate behind a home router's single public IP address.

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July 2, 2026 homelabnetworkingip-addresses

Networking Basics #1: IP Addresses and Subnets, via BreadLab's 192.168.1.0/24

Dive into the basics of IP addressing and subnets using real-world examples from my homelab setup.

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