Opening a server port to the Internet.

For some time, I have been thinking about having my “own” messaging service hosted on my home server. First, I wanted to test my knowledge and better understand how these kinds of services work. I was also curious about the challenges involved, because installing and running the service is only the first step. Second, I wanted to have a little more privacy online.

After some time researching, I ended up choosing a Synapse/Matrix server. I can host it on my own computer, and I found good reviews and recommendations about it. I am used to using WhatsApp, and Matrix feels very similar in both appearance and features.

Installing the service was not difficult, but to have it up and running, I would either need to rent a server online or expose one port from my home server. That decision did not take long. I decided to harden my server and expose only what was necessary.

Before long, I finally saw the confirmation message: Synapse service running.

This program has been running on my server for about a week now. Today is April 9th, 2026. It was built with Docker, and I used HAProxy as the reverse proxy. As I mentioned before, that was only the first step. I have already run into some problems during video calls, and the troubleshooting process has been very interesting. I am sure I will learn a lot more from this service.

This is already updated on Projects

Buying my First Switch

My homelab has a small number of components now:

  • iMac computer (running Debian)
  • My personal laptop (Ubuntu/Win11 dual boot)
  • 1 Raspberry Pi 3 B
  • 1 Raspberry Pi 4 B+
  • Flipper Zero

And now, I have recently bought a TP-Link TL-SG608E switch (https://www.tp-link.com/us/home-networking/8-port-switch/tl-sg608e/).

With this, my next steps will be:

🛡️ 1. DMZ-Style Network Architecture

🌐 2. Reverse Proxy with Network Segmentation

🔍 3. VLAN Segmentation Validation and Testing

🍯 4. Honeypot Deployment in an Isolated VLAN

📄 5. Homelab Infrastructure Documentation

I hope I will soon be able to update my website with these projects.

Thank you for reading all of this.

Leandro Freitas