symlink | network | dunelab

Also see hosts.

Dunelab is the "retro computing" part of the network. In the narrowest sense it is a small storage room containing Dune and its adjacent hardware, but it also encompasses various other physical equipment that is part of the same network.

It is the place to tinker and experiment with such things as:

• Various things involving Cisco routers:
  • X.25 over physical 128 kbps 'sync serial' links, X.25 over loopback T1 cable, X.25 over IP (see also Telebahn); also IP-over-HDLC and IP-over-X.25.
  • Routing ISO CLNS, AppleTalk, IPX.
• Backup uplinks via powerline, LTE, old LEMA wireless hardware, anything else I can get my hands on (maybe LoRa?)

Attempts to run "retro" services:

• Vintage Active Directory domain dunelab.sym and Windows NT domain DUNELAB (hosted on CHASM, a Windows 2000 Server VM running on Dune).
• FirstClass 11 server (installed and running, although mind-numbingly boring)
• Lotus Notes/Domino server (pending; can't decide on hostname)
• Microsoft Exchange 2000 server (as above)

Dunelab notes

• Remote console and remote access in general
• I used to resist the "internal wireguard network" setup for the longest time (the VPSes have IPsec set up in transport mode so that traffic between external addresses is automagically protected), but eventually the network grew to the extent that it got whole subnets, and the early IPsec/GRE interconnects eventually grew into a full OSPF-routed mesh with backup paths everywhere. Which only works when using addresses that are actually in the OSPF topology. By now the exterior addresses ("RLOCs" because I like the LISP "RLOC/EID" terminology) are almost entirely just for tunnels and the occasional leftover IPsec-protected connection, and there's a whole internal DNS setup with the .sym faux-TLD and such.
• Since LTE backup links are metered, performing nightly backups over them is ironically a bad idea. The LTE modems therefore have a firewall rule to block connections with an IP DSCP value of 1 (which is the recently-assigned 'LE' or "Lowest Effort" codepoint), and the nightly cron jobs on all virtual servers run ssh with the IPQoS=le option to request "backup job" treatment. (Not quite the typical "DSCP-based prioritization" kind of QoS setup, but the concept of IPToS-based routing has existed literally since ARPANET.)

Distant

Virtual servers and rented "cloud" dedicated hosts.

Emberside

(My first actual physical server, before the rest of the network existed. All I had before was a bunch of VPS instances.)

Windside

Duneside/Shoreside

(The source of the name "Dunelab".)

Frostside

Devices:

Connections:

Aug 2026