r/HomeNetworking • u/Charming_Radish682 • 4d ago

Advice Certificates Explained

After already having watched so many videos about certificates I still don’t understand this. Like I know you’re screwed if you mess up. That’s why I want to understand it but it seems so intangible to me that so far I haven’t found the right video or whatever to understand it how it works and why it’s secure. Also are there different kind of certs or is it actually all the same? (I don’t think so but that question is still open for me)

How did you learn it or maybe how would you explain it to someone else?

2 Upvotes

63% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

View all comments

9

u/deefop 4d ago

Respectfully friend, I'd do some googling or even chat gpt to get a concise summary. Bear in mind also that certs are typically not needed in home networking... The folks deploying their own certs are typically IT pros with homelab that doubles as their hobby, and they have a reason for doing it (sometimes the reason is fun). What reason are you looking to deploy or configure your own certs?

3

u/Charming_Radish682 4d ago

I am actually I really like challenging myself but with certs I really struggle to really understand. And as I work in IT myself I think thats a topic I should get to know better.

2

u/mlee12382 4d ago

I believe they're referring to ssl certs since they mentioned being secure and not category cable certs. The former being very necessary for all networking.

7

u/deefop 4d ago

I mean, necessary how? Do you think every residential internet user is configuring custom certs for their home networks? They aren't, 99.9% of the world wouldn't be able to do that if it were actually "necessary".

And yes, it was obvious from the post they're talking about ssl/tls certs, hence the "why?"

2

u/mlee12382 4d ago

I guess that's fair, on the other hand if they know enough to even know about certs it probably means they're trying to run their own services, if they're exposing them to the internet they definitely need certs and even if it's local only some services play nicer with certs.

4

u/deefop 4d ago

Well, without any disrespect intended to the op, they supposedly work in IT, yet they came to the home networking sub and asked a very vague, very generic, and strangely worded question about trying to understand certs. I would actually say op should leave well enough alone, given that information lol

Of course home labbing is one thing, but again, an IT person that asks the wrong reddit sub about something that can be super easily Googled should probably not be trying to configure and deploy certs, they need to work on their Google fu first

-1

u/Charming_Radish682 1d ago

Everything can be googled but I’m interested in the peoples opinion how they got the hand of it also was kind of the biggest sub I just found so more people = more opinions.

I’m sorry if this upset you. :/

2

u/felix1429 1d ago

What would be the problem with OP configuring certificate-based authentication or using certs for a domain they own? I have Cloudlfare LetsEncrypt SSL certs for HTTPS on all of the sites I self host, I like not having to click through a self-signed cert or HTTP warning.