My Internet Service Provider Andrews & Arnold provides my home with Internet services. This is how I configure my Raspberry Pi 5 to leverage the special “legacy” subnet they provide with Unifi networking hardware/software.

My UK ISP A&A has given me some IPv4 addresses:

$ ipcalc -b 81.187.180.129/26
Address:   81.187.180.129
Netmask:   255.255.255.192 = 26
Wildcard:  0.0.0.63
=>
Network:   81.187.180.128/26
HostMin:   81.187.180.129
HostMax:   81.187.180.190
Broadcast: 81.187.180.191
Hosts/Net: 62                    Class A

The following is how I have configured my Raspberry PI to be able host virtual machines (VPS = Virtual Private Servers) from that subnet.

Configuring Ubiquiti (UniFi) Network 10.x

https://192.168.1.1/network/default/clients/main

https://192.168.1.1/network/default/settings/settings_overview

Settings on Auto, note VLAN ID is 3.

https://192.168.1.1/network/default/settings/policy-table

Notice we route incoming traffic to that subnet to the Raspberry Pi’s IP address.

Configuring Raspberry Pi host

I’m now using Debian Trixie release of Raspberry Pi OS.

Tbh I do have ipv6.disable=1 in /boot/firmware/cmdline.txt to avoid confusion and drama.

/etc/systemd/network/10-end0.network

[Match]
Name=end0

# could have been DHCP, but I statically define it nonetheless
[Network]
Address=192.168.1.34/24
Gateway=192.168.1.1
DNS=8.8.8.8
DNS=8.8.4.4
VLAN=end0.3

/etc/systemd/network/15-end0.3.netdev

[NetDev]
Name=end0.3
Kind=vlan

[VLAN]
Id=3

/etc/systemd/network/15-end0.3.network

[Match]
Name=end0.3

[Network]
# No IP needed - containers use macvlan

To use macvlan over network-veth, I needed:

pi@five:/etc/systemd/system $ cat systemd-nspawn@.service.d/override.conf
[Service]
ExecStart=
ExecStart=systemd-nspawn --quiet --keep-unit --boot --link-journal=try-guest -U --settings=override --machine=%i

create-nspawn-vps

create-nspawn-vps is a helper script to create a new vm / vps / machine on a publicly addressable IP address.

Sample output:

✅ Container created successfully!
Name: debian-houseflies
User: hendry

ssh hendry@debian-houseflies
sudo machinectl shell debian-houseflies
pi@five:~/vms $ machinectl
MACHINE            CLASS     SERVICE        OS     VERSION ADDRESSES
debian-houseflies  container systemd-nspawn debian 13      81.187.180.167
debian-sacramentos container systemd-nspawn debian 13      81.187.180.130

2 machines listed.
pi@five:~/vms $ sudo machinectl shell debian-houseflies
Connected to machine debian-houseflies. Press ^] three times within 1s to exit session.
root@debian-houseflies:~# ping google.com
PING google.com (172.217.76.101) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from yulhrp-in-f101.1e100.net (172.217.76.101): icmp_seq=1 ttl=109 time=11.1 ms
64 bytes from yulhrp-in-f101.1e100.net (172.217.76.101): icmp_seq=2 ttl=109 time=11.0 ms
^]64 bytes from yulhrp-in-f101.1e100.net (172.217.76.101): icmp_seq=3 ttl=109 time=11.0 ms
^]
Connection to machine debian-houseflies terminated.

Raspberry Pi VPS hosting

Now whenever I want a little VPS, I can spawn one and have a play. Tbh I don’t quite understand how isolation works and my Pi only has 4GB of memory to play with, so it’s pretty underpowered. In future I would like to play with Docker and https://kamal-deploy.org/

Do let me know if it can be further improved!