Your home lab runs on the network. If you are not monitoring it, you are guessing. In this video I cover five areas of your network that give you real visibility so you can catch problems early and troubleshoot like a pro. We walk through ARP and MAC flapping, SNMP and RMON interface stats, sFlow and NetFlow for traffic visibility, DNS queries and response times, and latency and packet loss. I also show a simple tool stack you can run in Docker to get all of this stood up fast.
2 Home Lab Mini PCs I recommend:
Minisforum MS-A2: https://geni.us/HzwrN
MINIX EU715-AI: https://geni.us/zs83Eif
Tools mentioned
ARPwatch for ARP changes and flapping: https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/2025/01/build-your-own-arpwatch-docker-container-to-watch-your-network/
Zabbix or PRTG for SNMP and thresholds: https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/2025/11/why-i-switched-to-zabbix-for-monitoring-my-docker-containers/
ntopng or sFlowTrend for flow data: https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/2025/11/see-everything-on-your-home-lab-network-with-ntopng/
Pi-hole or AdGuard Home for DNS analytics: https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/2023/03/adguard-home-vs-pihole-best-adblocker/
SmokePing and Prometheus blackbox_exporter for latency checks
Netdata for quick live charts: https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/2024/10/netdata-docker-monitoring-for-home-lab/
Check out the VHT forums to get your questions answered: https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/community/
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Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:13 ARP requests and MAC flapping explained
3:44 Interface statistics with SNMP and RMON
5:43 sFlow and NetFlow traffic visibility
7:57 DNS queries and performance monitoring
9:32 Latency and packet loss with SmokePing
11:18 Building a simple monitoring stack in Docker
12:23 What to watch and why it matters
13:05 Thanks and next steps
If you found this helpful, please like, subscribe, and let me know in the comments which network monitors you are running in your lab and what I should cover next.
