Archangel

Upgrade in progress

Archangel is the Arch Linux box that guards my household network. It sits between my modem and the master router of my home mesh system, so all household traffic passes through it on the way in and out. It filters DNS for every device in the house and keeps track of everything that connects.

What it runs today

• Arch Linux: configured for automatic updates, with filesystem snapshots so a bad update can be rolled back.
• AdGuard Home: network-wide DNS filtering that blocks ads, trackers, and known-malicious domains for the whole household.
• NetAlertX: watches the network and flags every new device that joins it.

Upgrade: a fail-open, high-availability network appliance

Archangel is being upgraded into a dedicated network appliance built for high availability. Because it sits inline between the modem and the mesh router, a failure on Archangel could otherwise take the whole household offline. Instead, it's designed to fail open: if the box goes down, traffic passes straight through to the mesh router and the household stays online. To make that work at the hardware level, I've added a NOC-style passthrough network card that keeps the connection between the modem and the router alive even when Archangel itself is down. The tradeoff is deliberate: during an outage, traffic skips filtering until Archangel is back, but the internet connection never drops.

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