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Pi-hole 5.0

pi-hole.net

191–200 of 254 posts

Re: Pi-hole 5.0

#191

My pihole blocks about 20% of queries. I have noticed literally 0 changes in my internet or computer using experience since installing it. It's baffling how much useless telemetry and other crap there is, slowing internet down and wasting cpu cycles.

There's one thing i noticed: When I click on a twitter link, the first request goes via twitter analytics and gets blocked. I have to click it again, the second time it doesn't go to twitter analytics and the request goes through.

Re: Pi-hole 5.0

#192

I prefer blocking ads by browser extension for PC/iOS and device local MiTM solution (like AdGuard) for Android because these solutions can block more precisely and easier to unblock things permanently or temporary, compared to DNS server solution like Pi-hole or NextDNS. Why choose DNS solution? I suspect the reasons are maybe like for lower resource usage (especially for smartphones), works for smart device like TV…

There's a chrome extension where you can disable the ad-blocking on Pihole temporarily.

Not knowing how to disable it temporarily has been the one thing stopping me from adding Pihole to our network (need to test ads for clients sometimes...) so thank you.

Re: Pi-hole 5.0

#193

Can someone please explain how exactly does this work? So I have an ubuntu system. Is it ok to just install it in my local system alone and use it? Or should I be doing something to connect to a modem or something? I currently use my phone as the hotspot for my computer. If I install it say in a remote server in digital ocean, how can I use my phone/computer to use pi hole? Still a noob when it comes to networking so…

You can install it on any device you want. Just make sure you point to it as your DNS server.

My setup:

2x Raspberry Pi running Pi-hole 1x OpenWRT running DHCP

DHCP answers with DNS servers rpi1 and rpi2 IP addresses.

Does this make sense?

Re: Pi-hole 5.0

#194
Does it support blocking YouTube ads yet? I mean the short video ads that interrupt the videos

Re: Pi-hole 5.0

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, I’ve been needing to do this frequently.

What kind of sites, if you don't mind sharing? I've been using pi-hole for 4 years now and I can remember two situations when I had to disable it - and one of those was cloudflare's fault (PS4 cloud saves don't work with 1.1.1.1 DNS)

If you download minecraft mods they are often hosted behind some forced ad-showing website (ad-fly or something). That can be a problem with pi-hole.

Re: Pi-hole 5.0

#196
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They recommend the AdGuard Home one now... That's why they have replaced it. I also don't like it as AdGuard is a commercial company, and I have zero need for the added features like parental control. But I don't really care, I run all the dockers that have nothing to do with home assistant outside of hassio anyway.

To be fair, AdGuard Home is an open source project under GPL, so there's that.

I know. But still I would prefer something a non-profit or volunteer-driven project over one from a for-profit company. Especially in the adblocking business where investor concerns are very likely not going to be aligned with consumer interests. It's not about it being free, I support several free open source projects with donations. I just don't like the clashing interests.

For me that means Firefox, uBlock Origin and pihole (though I ran dnsmasq myself for a while, I like what they've made of pihole now, it's come a long way!)

Re: Pi-hole 5.0

#197
post #28

Alternatively for MAX_lazyness and convenience I've been using https://nextdns.io , does all the same stuff and is the alternative to cloudflare in Firefox for DNS-over-Https (DOH)

Is there an advantage in sending all of your DNS queries to a for-profit company vs. setting up your own Pi-hole? Their privacy policy seems legit[0] but why trust them at all when Pi-hole is an option? [0] https://nextdns.io/privacy

I use a smart DNS to unblock streaming web sites that are geo-locked.

Re: Pi-hole 5.0

#198
post #28

Alternatively for MAX_lazyness and convenience I've been using https://nextdns.io , does all the same stuff and is the alternative to cloudflare in Firefox for DNS-over-Https (DOH)

Nextdns pings are bad for me in south India. Like 8x slower than Cloudflare and 10x slower than Google. So sticking with PiHole at home setup for now and Windscribe VPN outside home.

Re: Pi-hole 5.0

#199
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting up automatic updates is probably a good idea.

Can you recommend a good way to make sure the Pi and Pi-hole are always up to date? I imagine a simple cron with pihole -up is not sufficient?

I've set a cron job on the raspberry pi at my parents' house. It's a debian based system with only PiHole running so I just pihole -up and apt update && upgrade every month or so.

Re: Pi-hole 5.0

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad in my country all ISPs are required by the government to intercept (or block) all dns requests except their own dns server to block any domain listed in the national domain blocklist database. DNS on port other than 53 is still working though, so I have set up my pihole to use an upstream dns server that accept connection on a higher port and a cloudflare DoH server as a fallback (not sure why but DoH is real…

They could've at least intercepted the requests and applied their blacklist while leaving unblacklisted requests pass through as-is (so you can still use a custom server for the non-banned domains). Not saying I'm in favour of these shenanigans at all but at least if you are forced to do it then better do it with the minimum level of interference possible.

Then you can have your client lookup blacklistedsite.com.yourdomain.com and have yourdomain.com return the record of blacklistedsite.com to bypass filtering.
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