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AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

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Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#101

Post by upheaval7276 »

SparkyMcUnicorn wrote: post #94
upheaval7276 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a NextDNS user for years now, and am trying out ControlD (last week) before I commit to switching. NextDNS development seems to have stalled and there are a number of conveniences missing, such as being able to label allowlist entries (ControlD supports this). Also, running the NextDNS app on a device that use a different profile then the one on my home router results in constant issues when the device wake…

It looks like cost is not comparable. ControlD pricing is per user and a router costs $5/month, but NextDNS is a flat $20/year. So ControlD would be significantly more than NextDNS for me personally.

It's very much comparable...for personal use: https://controld.com/plans?step=plans

Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#102

Post by HumblyTossed »

35mm wrote: post #98

Those who are using DNS level ad blocking: how much do sites break? And how easy is it to unblock them? I currently use browser based blocking and find a lot of sites don’t work at all. Typically SPAs. But if I have to use them, I can disable the adblocker in two clicks. How does that compare?

Sites break often if they're shitty. Especially if you click Google's "Sponsored" link by accident after a search because I block Google's ad stuff.

But, you get used to what sites break and decide if it is worth bothering to fix it or not.

I can disable my pihole by opening a browser, navigating to pihole and disabling it.

Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#103

Post by ololobus »

35mm wrote: post #98

Those who are using DNS level ad blocking: how much do sites break? And how easy is it to unblock them? I currently use browser based blocking and find a lot of sites don’t work at all. Typically SPAs. But if I have to use them, I can disable the adblocker in two clicks. How does that compare?

I use PiHole, it does break some stuff here and there, and sometimes useful things like Private Relay or iCloud in iOS; or once YouTube history stopped working for me (apparently they use a separate domain to track watched videos and progress!). It also depends on the block lists you upload. It’s pretty easy to unblock, especially web, as you just look on which domain cannot resolve in the browser dev tools and add it to the allow list.

Yet, DNS-based blockers have a limited usefulness at this moment as some major ad-providers started using the same primary domain for serving ads. For example, YouTube, partially Google, Yandex. I guess they cover everything with top level load-balancer and then route internally to specific service ingresses

Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#104

Post by lock-the-spock »

35mm wrote: post #98

Those who are using DNS level ad blocking: how much do sites break? And how easy is it to unblock them? I currently use browser based blocking and find a lot of sites don’t work at all. Typically SPAs. But if I have to use them, I can disable the adblocker in two clicks. How does that compare?

I use AdGuard home as part of my HomeAssistant setup and have had no problem at all. Only thing is to turn off the enforced safe search as that quite reduces results.

Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#105

Post by tamimio »

evanreichard wrote: post #68
JadoJodo wrote: post #3

I ran a competing project[0] on my home network for a few years before I discovered NextDNS[1]. What I lost in performance (requests don't leave my house) I gained in portability: ALL my devices can take advantage – at home and away – and time-saved. PiHole works 90% of the time, but when it did stop working, I'd have to spend a bit of time fixing it. At $20/year, I simply couldn't compete with NextDNS. Note: This is…

I'm curious what issues you ran into with Pi-hole? I was running my instance for years without a single hiccup. I ended up moving to AdGuard Home about a year ago though because I wanted to run it on my OPNSense box. I have an automatic WireGuard VPN set up on my devices to VPN into my home network when I'm not connected to my SSID, so my local DNS still works remotely.

I did have several issues with adguard home, after some time (or packets?) the dns wouldn’t resolve and basically you can’t open any website, you can ping with no issues but not opening the site, only resolved by either restarting the server or waiting few minutes, didn’t bother to troubleshoot it but I tried it on several hardware and got the same issues with different interruptions time.

Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#106

Post by nprateem »

hackeman300 wrote: post #89
oceanplexian wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except all of these third party VPN and DNS type services are literally NSA honeypots and privacy nightmares. I get that you have to do DNS lookups somewhere, but I'm not going to make it ridiculously trivial for a bad actor to scoop up all that data conveniently in a central location.

Mullvad is an NSA honeypot? Got any sources on that?

I agree there's a very high chance they and the majority of other VPNs are - or if not the US some other intel org.

The US government has form (what was that early crypto machine they sold to allies and it was backdoored?), and they'd be foolish to miss such a strategically obvious play.

Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#107

Post by lencastre »

evanreichard wrote: post #68
JadoJodo wrote: post #3

I ran a competing project[0] on my home network for a few years before I discovered NextDNS[1]. What I lost in performance (requests don't leave my house) I gained in portability: ALL my devices can take advantage – at home and away – and time-saved. PiHole works 90% of the time, but when it did stop working, I'd have to spend a bit of time fixing it. At $20/year, I simply couldn't compete with NextDNS. Note: This is…

I'm curious what issues you ran into with Pi-hole? I was running my instance for years without a single hiccup. I ended up moving to AdGuard Home about a year ago though because I wanted to run it on my OPNSense box. I have an automatic WireGuard VPN set up on my devices to VPN into my home network when I'm not connected to my SSID, so my local DNS still works remotely.

Is there any config update to the wire guard profile needed to ensure that DNS request traffic is routed through pi-hole?

Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#108

Post by LeoPanthera »

35mm wrote: post #98

Those who are using DNS level ad blocking: how much do sites break? And how easy is it to unblock them? I currently use browser based blocking and find a lot of sites don’t work at all. Typically SPAs. But if I have to use them, I can disable the adblocker in two clicks. How does that compare?

It entirely depends on which blocklist(s) you use. I had to stop using the StevenBlack list because it started breaking a lot of things, apparently intentionally.

I recommend using only one list, rather than a combination of several. I switched to the https://oisd.nl Big List, which has been great... although it did break GitHub yesterday. That was the first breakage since I switched, and it was fixed when I reported. But still, keeping an eye on it.

Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#109

Post by nprateem »

35mm wrote: post #98

Those who are using DNS level ad blocking: how much do sites break? And how easy is it to unblock them? I currently use browser based blocking and find a lot of sites don’t work at all. Typically SPAs. But if I have to use them, I can disable the adblocker in two clicks. How does that compare?

Forget about streaming media from amazon prime and various terrestrial broadcast apps. But just create 2 networks, one protected, one not.

Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#110

Post by therealfiona »

evanreichard wrote: post #68
JadoJodo wrote: post #3

I ran a competing project[0] on my home network for a few years before I discovered NextDNS[1]. What I lost in performance (requests don't leave my house) I gained in portability: ALL my devices can take advantage – at home and away – and time-saved. PiHole works 90% of the time, but when it did stop working, I'd have to spend a bit of time fixing it. At $20/year, I simply couldn't compete with NextDNS. Note: This is…

I'm curious what issues you ran into with Pi-hole? I was running my instance for years without a single hiccup. I ended up moving to AdGuard Home about a year ago though because I wanted to run it on my OPNSense box. I have an automatic WireGuard VPN set up on my devices to VPN into my home network when I'm not connected to my SSID, so my local DNS still works remotely.

Too many false positives with Pi-Hole. I never felt comfortable putting my partner on the same vlan that it was serving DNS requests for fear that something would break for them when I was out of town, unable to get into the pi-hole and sort out the issue.

I also had my banking app stop working one day. Never could get it working. Eventually I just got fed up with having to switch vlans or to mobile data to check my bank and got rid of the pi-hole.

The blocker on PFsense eventually had the same issue.

Realistically, I was probably running too many overly restricting blocklists for my actual needs.

But, I also don't want to fiddle with messing with the out of the block blocklists that also caused me issues.

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