Shadowing Practice: your home router STILL SUCKS!! (use OPNsense instead) - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Your home router still sucks.
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Wait. You still haven't gotten rid of it yet?
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Get it out of here.
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It sucked six years ago, and now it's even worse.
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The government just banned it.
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Turns out some Chinese hackers were living inside of it.
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Slow, insecure, boring, and now illegal.
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That's exactly what I told my editor Mike this morning.
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You see, he's moving into a new house, and his ISP is handing him one of these.
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Not on my watch, dude. By the way, this is the first video in a series where I'm building out Mike's whole network.
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Stay tuned.
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So we're gonna replace Mike's router and yours with this, a mini PC that I bought in Japan.
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Wait. What?
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You'll see.
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And it's running the most secure and fun firewall OS out there, OPNsense.
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Whole house ad blocking, a real firewall, free open source, and you're in control.
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But I know what you're thinking.
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Mike's not an IT guy.
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He's just an editor.
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Can he handle this?
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Kind of. Setting it up is actually easy.
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I'm gonna walk you through every step.
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You'll have a running router by the end of this video.
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But the advanced stuff?
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No. I'm gonna hand that to an AI agent and see if this thing can manage itself so Mike never has to text me at 3AM.
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And the first thing I'm gonna have it do is block an entire country.
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Guess which one?
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I have no idea if this is gonna work.
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We'll find out together.
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Let's get your coffee ready.
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It's time to throw your home router in the trash.
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Now I can already see you typing in the comments about the FCC router ban.
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Actually, Chuck existing home routers are grandfathered in and aren't illegal.
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True. But that doesn't mean the threat goes away.
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Your router is the reason the government is banning future routers.
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So here's why what we're doing is important.
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Where's my pen?
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Found it. Mike's router is his family's gateway to the Internet and also the Internet's gateway to his family.
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These mass produced goblin gateways are often riddled with software vulnerabilities that can allow hackers to access your home.
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Yeah. They can see that camera in your living room.
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Wait. Hi. So we're going to replace this goblin gateway with an OPNsense router firewall, a device that is secure and we control.
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But what exactly is this device, and do you need a mini PC from Japan?
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No. You don't.
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Because the hardware can actually be a lot of things.
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OPNsense is just software, so you get to choose the hardware.
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And before you say it, I know.
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This device, I bought it in Japan.
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I think it was actually made in China, but it's not about where it's from.
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It's about the software that's on it, and you control it.
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And by the way, I chose OPNsense over pfSense, is which what I used in the last video, because OPNsense is a 100% open source unlike pfSense.
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They closed source the best version of their software back in 2021 and put it behind a paywall.
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Gross. Anyways, now the hardware can be a lot of things.
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It could be a spare laptop, a virtual machine, that appliance that I use for pfSense in my last video.
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Really anything that is x86 based can run OPNsense.
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Here are the minimum and recommended specs.
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What you choose depends on the size of your network and what features you enable.
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Some key things you might wanna pay attention to, and it's important, important.
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The ports. You'll want two Ethernet ports minimum.
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One to plug into the Internet and one to use for your network for your LAN.
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If you don't have two, that's totally fine.
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You can get one of those USB Ethernet adapters.
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That will work.
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Now back to Mike.
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Let's talk about his network because there's actually something missing here, and it's a big deal.
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Don't step forward without knowing this.
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I don't want you to get mad at me.
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This OPNsense router firewall thing right here, it's just that.
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It's just a router and a firewall.
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It's not a network switch, and it's not a wireless access point.
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Mike's Goblin Gateway, it had all that stuff built in.
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Don't fall for it.
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It looks good.
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It's a trap.
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What we're doing is still good.
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But when we replace Mike's Goblin Gateway with an OPNsense router firewall, we need two more things.
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I'll have a list of recommended devices below.
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First, we'll need a network switch.
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It essentially gives us more LAN ports or ports for all your devices if they're physical and plugged in.
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It's kinda like a power strip.
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Now a managed switch is recommended because it will unlock some cool VLAN security things like putting your IoT devices on a separate network.
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Now you can use an unmanaged switch.
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That's fine.
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It'll work.
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You just won't have cool features.
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And they'll also need a wireless access point.
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Without it, Mike and his kids won't have Wi Fi, and they might kill me.
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Now I will walk you through the setup of the switch and the access point in part two.
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But to get started, you don't need those devices.
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Like, right now, and this is what we're gonna do, you can just plug your computer into the LAN port, and that's just fine for testing and having fun and seeing what this thing does, which you need to do.
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But hold on.
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How do we actually connect this device to the Internet?
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Like, how do we actually do it and replace the router?
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Let's talk about that after a word from our sponsor.
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Yes, Chuck.
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That is why all of us are throwing our Chinese routers in the trash.
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Austin, over to you with our Bitdefender scam forecast.
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It's stormy out there.
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Thanks, Mike.
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And folks, it is nasty out there.
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Cancel your weekend plans and downloading free RAM because we have a massive system rolling through the Dallas Metro.
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From the North, we have a thick band of fake toll texts rolling in.
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You owe $43.92.
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Ouch. You have a 100% chance of getting hit with this before lunch today.
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Creeping in from the West, we have a cluster of fake USPS delivery texts.
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You know the ones.
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We have your package.
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Send us money.
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We'll get it back to you.
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And, Mike, these are really the perfect conditions for a fake Facebook ad campaign I've been tracking forming right off the coast.
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Victims have actually been calling in about that one all morning.
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Hey, Austin.
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You're scaring me.
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But can't a guy like me keep my family safe from threats on the line?
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Not anymore, Mike.
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These things are AI generated.
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Perfect grammar.
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Your real name.
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Real logos.
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You won't see these things coming.
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And last year, these things cost people over $1,000,000,000,000.
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Holy moly. That is so scary, it almost doesn't seem real.
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So how do people stay safe out there?
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Great question, Mike.
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Bitdefender scam radar.
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It's just like me.
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Put it in your pocket, and it's not reading your texts.
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No. It's watching over your whole area.
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The second a scam wave rolls in, it pings you.
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Heads up. Take cover.
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Yes. You too can be safe just like him with Bitdefender scam radar.
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Free heads up when scams hit your area.
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You get alerts on your iPhone, Android, or your other things from the people who have been doing AI threat detection since 2008.
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Link below.
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Stay safe out there, Mike.
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Back to you.
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Well, that is all folks.
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Enjoy your YouTube program.
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Chuck, back to you.
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Now we can commonly replace your router in one of two ways.
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First way is the easy way, and it's the way I'm gonna show you in this This will still involve your Goblin router, but it's okay.
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You'll see.
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All we're going to do, and this is the easiest way to put this into your network, is plug in your OPNsense device into an open port on your existing Goblin gateway.
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This will be the WAN port on your OPNsense firewall, and you're like, what?
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What does that mean?
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We'll talk about it.
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This does work.
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And as long as you only use connections through the OPNsense firewall, you are protected and safe.
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We're essentially doing what's called double NAT right here, which is fine for most things.
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It might cause a few issues with some applications, but in most cases, this is gonna work.
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And it's a great option for just testing this.
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You may not wanna fully replace your router yet.
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You wanna test it out, see if it works.
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Option two is not hard.
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It's just different.
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In this situation, you're likely still gonna be using your goblin gateway, but you're gonna make it dumb.
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You're gonna put it into what's called bridge mode or pass through mode.
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And it essentially turns off the router's brain, and it becomes a bridge between the Internet or your ISP and your OPNsense router firewall.
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The main difference here is that your OPNsense firewall will actually receive a public IP from your ISP when your goblin gateway is in bridge mode.
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Whereas in the other mode where you're just simply plugging it in and doing double NAT, it'll likely receive a private IP address from your goblin gateway router.
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I will not be covering how to do bridge mode for your router because I don't know what router you have, but many routers can do this.
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Check the documentation.
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In either case, your network and access to the Internet is now being managed by a device you control.
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It's secure.
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Now we're finally here.
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We can actually get OPNsense on this device that you have, whichever device you chose.
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Whatever the case, you're going to need a USB flash drive so we can write the image on there and put OPNsense on this bad boy.
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You'll also need a keyboard, and I don't know why I grabbed this one.
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I have one right here just to show you.
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And you'll need a monitor.
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Editor, put one in my hands.
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Step one, let's flash the USB.
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Plug that sucker into your computer.
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Go out to opnsense.org.
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Click on download OPNsense.
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In most cases, you're gonna do the VGA image type.
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If you're not sure, just do that.
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Download. And to write that image to our USB device, we're gonna use an application called Etcher to etch it on.
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I'll link for that below.
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Just go ahead and download Etcher.
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It's available for everything.
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You click on flash from file, choose OPNsense, select your target.
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Be careful.
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Make sure you choose the right USB drive, and then flash.
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Once you're done, take out your PC and plug that sucker into your OPNsense device.
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Then we'll get power, keyboard, plug in your monitor.
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Now we're on to step two, plug it into your device and install.
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You will need to boot into the boot menu or the BIOS, which is the operating system before your operating system.
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That's gonna vary based on whatever device you got.
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I think mine says to press F12.
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I hope it works.
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Ready, set, go.
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I'm just gonna start pressing F12 like a madman.
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I did it. I was actually worried about that working.
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Alright. So there's my USB drive right there.
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I'm gonna boot from that.
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K. Cool. Now also at this point, if you happen to have an Ethernet cable, go ahead do what we talked about.
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Plug in your router and to just pick a port.
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You can assign the WAN port when you actually configure this now with me.
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I'm gonna choose this port, And it's blinky.
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Alright. That felt weird saying.
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I'm not gonna lie.
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I won't say that again.
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That's running in live mode from install media.
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The login will be Installer.
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Password will be OPNsense, I think.
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Dang it. There we go.
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Default key map.
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Choose ZFS unless you have a good reason not to.
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Choose Stripe.
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Hit space to select that storage device.
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Hit okay. Are you sure you wanna destroy everything?
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Yes. And it's installing.
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Little coffee break.
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It's almost done.
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I'm getting excited.
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It's almost there.
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Just go. Is it did it stop moving?
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Whoo. It's done.
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Alright. Let's set the root password.
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This will be the password you're gonna use to log in to your system.
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Make sure you remember it both times.
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Nailed it. Okay.
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And we'll say complete install, and we will reboot now.
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Yes. Alright.
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I'm gonna go ahead and remove the USB flash drive.
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Shouldn't need that.
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Although, it gave me an ugly message.
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I think it's fine.
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I'm sorry. Why am I talking to my stuff?
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I've been using AI too much.
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I'm used to everything talking back to me.
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And there it goes.
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We are now booting in to our OPNsense firewall.
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We'll log in with the root username and the password that we just set.
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Now don't worry.
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There is a gorgeous GUI, but we're gonna worry about a few things here in the CLI.
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First thing is assigning interfaces.
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So hit option one.
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Boom. Now you may not have this problem, but I do.
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No interfaces found.
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What? I've got two right here.
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Well, it's because I have no drivers in OPNsense for my Realtek NIC.
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OPNsense just doesn't have them.
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If you hit that, you'll need to install those drivers some way.
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I'm gonna do that right now.
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I just installed my drivers.
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I wanna assign my interfaces.
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I wanna configure lags, not right now.
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VLANs, not right now.
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It does have my interfaces now.
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I'm gonna do a for auto detection, see if that works.
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I'm gonna disconnect the interface, plug it back in just to make sure.
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Hit enter. It didn't detect it.
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Let's try r e zero specifying the interface.
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And then the LAN interface, it'll be the other one, r e one.
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This is what will connect to your your network, your local area network.
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Local. You.
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Nothing for optional.
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There's our mappings right there.
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Don't wanna proceed.
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Type in y. Boom.
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Now if we type in the number eight, we can hit the shell, and I can do things like ifconfig.
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Let me, grep for r e zero.
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Oh, I can't see r e zero.
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Let's try. And there is my IP address.
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I noticed that's not a public IP address, meaning it's not one from my ISP.
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It's not a a public Internet address, but it is a private one assigned by my router, the one I'm plugged into.
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That's gonna work.
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Now at this point, I can connect my computer to the LAN interface.
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Let me find an Ethernet cable.
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Oh, I had one sitting right here the whole time.
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Not sure why I'm singing this.
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Now also notice if I do ifconfig, I look at the LAN interface, which I had as r e one.
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The IP address is one nine two dot one six eight dot one dot one.
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That's actually the IP address of this device and how you're going to access it.
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So plugging in my PC into the LAN port that we designated, easy for me to say, boom.
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What should happen?
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Because this thing's already pretty much fully set up.
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It's gonna give my computer an IP address.
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Let's go see.
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IP config on Windows.
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Ah, and there it is.
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This is from my OPNsense firewall.
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Wow. My drawing is so bad writing like this.
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Let's avoid that.
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So now what we're gonna do is we're gonna grab this IP address one nine two dot one six eight dot one dot one, and that's how we can access the gorgeous GUI.
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I'm gonna get this keyword out of here.
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We don't need him.
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192.168.1.1.
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It's okay. We can proceed.
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He's safe. And here we are.
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If you got here, this is an exciting moment.
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You're about to log in to your new router and firewall.
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Same thing as before.
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The username will be root, and the password will be that thing you set.
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And I fat fingered it.
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Drive over time, and we're in.
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Now like I told you before oh, well, here we go.
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It's taking us on a ride.
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System configuration wizard.
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Let's let's do it real quick.
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Click on next.
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We can name it Mike's router.
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Oh, we can do better than that.
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Mike's cursed router.
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We'll change time zone to my time zone.
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Chicago. For DNS servers, leave that blank, but we are gonna enable this right now.
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And this is part of being secure.
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We're going to enable DNSSEC security.
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Feel like, what the junk is that?
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I got a video on that right here.
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Just know it's secure DNS.
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Yes, sir. Next.
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It's not valid.
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Okay. Let's we'll do dashes.
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Yes. It will.
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For the WAN, DHCP means it's receiving an IP address from either our ISP or our home router, our goblin gateway.
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That's fine.
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It works. One thing you may wanna do if you're doing double NAT or if you're getting a private IP address on this WAN interface like we are, disabling this will be helpful.
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Blocking private networks.
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Click on next.
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There's a DHCP configuration.
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It's already good.
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Next, optimize for multi WAN.
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I'm not doing that.
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You probably aren't either.
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Uncheck it.
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Next, we're good on the password.
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Next, and apply.
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Congratulations.
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Now at this point, it's working.
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Like, you could walk away and you have a pretty secure thing, you know, we can tweak this.
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That's why we're here.
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We wanna have fun with this router.
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Quick flyby.
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Here we go.
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First thing, dashboard.
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Click on that.
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Look at this.
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Isn't this fun?
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Interface statistics, graphs.
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There's our CPU.
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Let's go take a look at DHCP services, Dnsmasq DNS, and DHCP.
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Leases. Hey.
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That was high.
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This is us.
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That's my PC, Deb 2.
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Do y'all remember Deb?
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Comment below if you remember Deb.
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What about DNS?
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Let's go to services.
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Unbound DNS.
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And let's make a few things more secure.
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Let's go to general.
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First, verify that you have DNSSEC enabled.
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We already did that in the wizard.
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Just double check it here.
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This is where the configuration lives.
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Then we'll do this.
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Go over to DNS over TLS.
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This is secure encrypted DNS.
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Boom. Here we're going to add a new DNS server.
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Hit that little plus icon there.
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Now just so you know, this thing right now is your DNS server, but he still needs to talk to another DNS server, an upstream DNS server to get information about the Internet.
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This is what we're doing right now.
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We'll do Cloudflare first, one dot one dot one dot one for the server IP.
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Server port is eight five three.
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Forward first unchecked and verify CN is cloudflare-dns.com.
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Describe this as Cloudflare and click on save.
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And then one more time, apply.
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Now one more setting we have to make sure we, add.
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Let's go to system, settings, general, and then down here at the bottom, you'll see DNS server options, allow DNS server list to be overridden by DHCP PPP on WAN.
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Uncheck this to make sure that the DNS server we just set is the one that's gonna be used for devices using your firewall.
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Save. Real quick, let's go to reporting, Unbound DNS.
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Oh, we don't have reporting configured.
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Let's configure that.
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Click on go to reporting configuration.
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Enable it. Checkbox.
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Save. Now let's go back to services, back to Unbound DNS.
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And what do you say we block some ads?
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Click on blocklist.
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Click on that plus sign, and here we can choose our DNS blocklist.
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Let's choose why not AdGuard's list?
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Cool. Let's add that.
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Let's do abuse.ch.
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Why not? This multi pro extended pop up ads, fake scams.
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Oh, yeah. Let's get all of it.
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Let's go for now.
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Click on save.
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Oh, we gotta describe it.
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My list. Save.
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Apply. Actually, you know what?
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Hold on. I'm gonna disable it and apply.
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Let's see what it looks like before we do it.
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This is a website to help you test if your ad blocking is blocking ads.
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Obviously, it's not.
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Let's go to speed test too because they're really bad about that, ironically.
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Yeah. Look at all these ads.
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Now let's enable it.
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Enable. Apply.
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And in case you're wondering, yes, this is doing the same thing that you might get from AdGuard or Pi Hole, so you don't have to have a separate device.
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This thing does it all.
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Let's go see if it worked.
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Refresh. We still have ads.
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Let's add more protection.
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We'll do OISD domain blocklist ads.
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Maybe big. Probably being a little bit too extra right now, but we'll see.
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Okay. It seems to be working.
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No ads. Let's go back to speed test, refresh.
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Oh, yeah. We are ad free.
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We can go up here to reporting once more.
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We go to Unbound DNS and start to see some reports on this.
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10% blocked.
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Top blocked domains.
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We can see it's blocked by my list that we just made.
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Okay. Let's get back to our lobby and our dashboard.
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But, honestly, this is a lot, isn't it?
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And let me tell you, you don't have to configure really anything else.
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This is already doing great.
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But if you do wanna configure more stuff, what if we had AI do this for us, like, right now?
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Let's try it out.
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You ready? Get your coffee ready.
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I have no idea this is gonna work.
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So I've got a Raspberry Pi down here somewhere.
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Trust me, it's there.
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I just can't lift it up because it's a cable mess.
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You wanna see?
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Yeah. It's, there he is.
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It's strung up like Spider Man, but he's doing stuff.
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He's got Hermes agent installed.
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I'm not gonna show you how to set up a Hermes agent right now because I already did it in this video right here.
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First, need our API key from OPNsense.
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This will give our agent access to this device.
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So I'll go to system, access, users, and no.
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We're not going to API keys.
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We're gonna go over here to this ticket under our root user and say create and download an API key for this user.
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Yes. Yes. And it did it.
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Let's look at it.
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There it is.
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We're gonna copy this.
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We're gonna say, hey.
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Talking to our Hermes agent.
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Your name is Pig.
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Learn everything you can about OPNsense and managing a firewall.
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Here are your keys.
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Here is a link to the documentation.
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That's all I'm doing.
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Dude, he did his job.
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He found all the host.
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He's gonna use a cancel rollback pattern so we don't lock ourselves out.
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This is what I'm talking about.
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Now let's see if he can actually do stuff.
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This is good in theory.
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We're gonna give him three tests.
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First, let's say, I want you to add Google DNS as a DNS server for us.
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Make it an additional server that we can use.
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Let's see what he does.
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This requires him to, like, actually know our DNS configuration and then be able to make that configuration.
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He called it a simple, healthy, OPNsense router firewall.
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Simple? Okay.
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He did it. He also tested it.
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He and he refers himself as Pig.
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I love that.
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Let's go see what he did.
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Go to our services.
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Unbound DNS.
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DNS over TLS.
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He didn't add it there.
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Oh, he added to query for forwarding.
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Ah, let me correct him.
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No. This needed to be DNS over TLS.
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Okay. He did it.
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Let's go see.
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Like a champ.
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He did it. That's amazing.
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Okay. Calm down.
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Second test.
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Add a DHCP reservation for my desktop Deb 2.
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Make it the one that's already assigned.
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That was actually pretty quick.
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Let's go see if we did it.
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Leases. There I am, Deb.
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Lease type is static.
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Last test. Okay.
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Big job. I want you to use the firewall to block the country of China.
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I don't I don't even know.
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See what happens.
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Okay. He said he did it.
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Good job, Pig.
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K. So the built in GeoIP source was not configured.
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He used country CIDR feeds for Mainland China and load them into firewall URLs URL table aliases.
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He tested it too.
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Let's go see.
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Firewall rules.
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He did. Okay.
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AI can officially manage this OPNsense firewall.
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Mike, you're good to go, dude.
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And this agent's gonna get smarter and more capable.
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I think it's gonna really help us with our configurations in episode two.
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Okay. At this point, we have a router, and it's pretty much ready for Mike's house.
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We built it.
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We configured it.
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This thing is way better than your current crappy old router that's been banned by the government.
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But now it's time to actually add a switch at an access point and do some fun security stuff like a VLAN for your IoT devices.
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We're gonna do that for Mike.
506
Oh, and I'll also need a secure VPN connection back to my studio here so we can work.
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That's all I got.
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I'll catch you guys next time.
509
I don't know why I touched the firewall when I said that.
510
Bye. Hey. You made it to the end of the video.
511
At the end of my videos, I like to pray for you, my audience.
512
I do actually care about you guys, and I think the best way I can show any kind of love to you is by praying for you.
513
I believe it has a massive impact, and it will change your life.
514
So if you don't mind, I wanna pray for you right now.
515
I know it's a little weird.
516
Just go with it.
517
One, two, three, pray.
518
God, I thank you for the person on the other side of the screen.
519
I thank you that they're here, that they're passionate about IT, that, that they care about their lives enough to, and and their careers enough to just learn and continuously grow.
520
I pray I pray that you, bless them in that and build up their lives.
521
I pray for their families and and their careers now that you would allow them to take the skills they're learning now through this video and just something is what might seem simple as adding a router to their house will actually blossom into a skill set they can use to make some serious money for their family, have a career that's fulfilling and exciting, and make them excited to wake up each day.
522
God, just I I ask that for them in your name.
523
And if they're in their career right now and they're feeling stuck, if they're feeling unhappy, if they're in a job that just kinda drains them, I pray that you would give them the strength to not only endure it, but have peace with where they're at.
524
Give them contentment.
525
Let them find the the thing about their job or where they're at that just brings them joy.
526
And if that's not what's in the cards for them, just provide a way out for them, God.
527
Thank you so much for them.
528
Bless them indeed.
529
I ask this in your name, Jesus.
530
Amen. Thank you so much, and let me pray for you.
531
I'll catch you guys next time.
532
Bye.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 531 sentences and 4592 words to shadow. The speech runs for 23:03. The speaker talks fast, about 199 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 82% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| plug noun | /plʌɡ/ | A pronged connecting device which fits into a mating socket, especially an electrical one. |
| server noun | /ˈsɝvɚ/ | A program that provides services to other programs or devices, either in the same computer or over a computer network. |
| interface noun | /ˈɪn(t)ɚˌfeɪs/ | The point of interconnection or contact between entities. |
| gateway noun | /ˈɡeɪtˌweɪ/ | A passage that can be closed by use of a gate. |
| pray verb | /pɹeɪ/ | To direct words, thoughts, or one's attention to a deity or any higher being, for the sake of adoration, thanks, petition for help, etc. |
| enable verb | /ɪˈneɪ.bəl/ | To make somebody able (to do, or to be, something); to give sufficient ability or power to do or to be; to give strength or ability to. |
| configuration noun | /kənˌfɪɡ.əˈɹeɪ̯.ʃən/ | The form of a thing, as depending on the relative placement of the parts of a thing's shape. |
| password noun | /ˈpæs.wɜɹd/ | A word relayed to a person to gain admittance to a place or to gain access to information. |
| scam noun | /ˈskæm/ | A fraudulent or dishonest deal. A swindle. |
| flash verb | /flæʃ/ | To cause to shine briefly or intermittently. |
| install verb | /ɪnˈstɔl/ | To connect, set up or prepare something for use |
| assign verb | /əˈsaɪn/ | To designate or set apart (something) for some purpose. |
| boom verb | /bum/ | To make a loud, hollow, resonant sound. |
| boot noun | /but/ | A heavy shoe that covers part of the leg. |
| essentially adverb | /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/ | In essence: by nature. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| go ahead verb | /ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/ | To proceed with; to begin. |
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. | |
| set up verb | /ˌsɛt ˈʌp/ | To make ready for use. |
| build out verb | To develop or expand (a system, structure, project, etc.). | |
| build up verb | To erect; to construct. | |
| calm down verb | To become less excited, intense, or angry. | |
| find out verb | To discover, as by asking or investigating. | |
| get back to verb | Return to (an activity) |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | I've been tracking · have actually been calling · have been doing |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are grandfathered · are often riddled · was actually made |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who have · here, which is · BIOS, which is |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | haven't gotten · that's been banned |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 208 contractions and reduced forms, such as gonna, we're, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: thick /θɪk/, grandfather /ˈɡɹæn(d)ˌfɑðɚ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: configuration /kənˌfɪɡ.əˈɹeɪ̯.ʃən/, flash /flæʃ/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, trash /tɹæʃ/, detection /dɪˈtɛk.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: configuration /kənˌfɪɡ.əˈɹeɪ̯.ʃən/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, documentation /ˌdɑkjəmɛnˈteɪʃən/, congratulations /kənˌɡɹæt͡ʃəˈleɪʃ(ə)nz/, continuously /kənˈtɪnjuəsli/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like plug, server, interface.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.