UW-Stout Computer Networking and Information Technology Program

CNIE/Cybersecurity Student Homelab Spotlight:

Another great example of “learning by doing” at UW–Stout 👏

Shoutout to another CNIE/Cyber freshman student Matthew Urich for building a full-stack enterprise-style home lab, combining networking, systems, and services in one integrated environment.

His setup includes:

Cisco routers (2811, 2921) with CME and IPsec tunneling
IP phones and legacy telephony integration
Dell R730 running Proxmox with services like NGINX, Pi-hole, NextCloud, and more
TrueNAS storage with RAID configuration
Self-hosted services accessible via his own domain

From VoIP to cloud-style services!

👏 Great work, Matthew Urich!

CNIE/Cybersecurity Student Homelab Spotlight:

Big shoutout to our freshman student Nick Best for building a production-grade secure home lab 👏

Instead of just following a textbook, Nick implemented a “Cloud DMZ” using:

• VPS gateway to hide his home IP
• WireGuard for an encrypted tunnel (bypassing CGNAT/double NAT)
• Caddy + Docker for automated HTTPS and service isolation

Great to see a freshman applying real-world, zero trust architecture in practice—no open ports, secure by design, and aligned with how modern infrastructure is built.

Check it out:
🔗 https://post.nickloves.me

👏 Great work, Nick Best!