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Setting up a Pi Hole made my home network faster

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Re: Setting up a Pi Hole made my home network faster

#231

Post by squarefoot »

ghostpepper wrote: post #56
anthropodie wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You solve that by not buying such crap-ware. You buy open hardware systems.

I would love if there was an open 4K HDR TV but I think only a very niche audience actually cares about this so most manufacturers will not see a market opportunity

Search for "signage displays", some have TV functionality built in and some have no, or more tweakable, smart functions. Cost is a lot higher than consumer sets as is quality: they're built to guarantee 18/24 or even 24/24 operation and are the same screens one sees around at malls, streets, stations, airports, etc that would be simply too costly if they broke as often as consumer devices do.

Re: Setting up a Pi Hole made my home network faster

#232

Post by cgriswald »

ignoramous wrote: post #217
cgriswald wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless I understand incorrectly, this doesn't seem to make the problem any worse. You'd just have to block the proxy rather than the DNS server. Like DoH, only a problem if that's also the web server.

You're correct but you are viewing the comment out of context. GP said: "I guess you could mitm your own ssl traffic and strip out dns answers there?" ODoH isn't going to be defeated by TLS MitM afaik.

In order for this to be true the device manufacturer would have to send both DNS and web requests through the proxy. They'd also have to "obliviously" encrypt web traffic as well. Otherwise, a MITM could determine which are DoH requests or determine which server is the proxy server and which are web requests.

This means that the DNS response for the web server would always be the proxy itself, or some set of proxies (and it would have to be the same IP for both wanted and unwanted traffic). What does DNS even add at that point? You'd be better off just making your "wanted" and "unwanted" servers the same server.

Re: Setting up a Pi Hole made my home network faster

#233

Post by piperswe »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #199
ghostpepper wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love if there was an open 4K HDR TV but I think only a very niche audience actually cares about this so most manufacturers will not see a market opportunity

I see your point. Real question: In today's world, what is the difference between a TV and a computer monitor + RasPi? I guess the biggest issue will be streaming on services with very strict operating system / browser requirements. For example, can you stream Netflix @ 4K via RasPi? I assume no, due to super strict DRM. It is a little bit surprising to me that the big streaming companies have not creating an open so…

Size, OLED, HDR, and eARC are three things I can't find in a monitor. I don't know of any 55" OLED monitors that support Dolby Vision and can output their audio to my home audio system over eARC. OLED and Dolby Vision are important to me because HDR makes such a huge difference in properly mastered content. eARC is important because my audio system is able to take advantage of Dolby Atmos metadata and I don't want to lose that. I could just pass my HDMI inputs through my receiver, but my receiver doesn't support passing through 4k 120Hz which I appreciate using with my Xbox.

HDR and OLED are available in some monitor models, but to my knowledge there aren't any 55" monitors with HDR and OLED, and especially eARC.

Re: Setting up a Pi Hole made my home network faster

#234

Post by kayson »

pdimitar wrote: post #28
kayson wrote: post #15

While the interface may not be as pretty, you can do the same thing if you're running pfsense using the pfblocker-ng package: https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/packages/pfblocke... You can also so geo-based IP blocking Combined with pfsense's recursive resolved (unbound), it makes for a pretty great home dns setup.

I know some of these words. [cries in not being network-admin educated] Jokes aside, I'd love a blog post on this. Seriously. Very likely to apply the knowledge as well.

I would suggest starting with the pfsense documentation. It's great!

Re: Setting up a Pi Hole made my home network faster

#235

Post by merlyn »

jeffkeen wrote: post #158
ferminaut wrote: post #29

I know some folks are anti Ubiquiti Unifi on here, but you can run pihole (along with a bunch of other stuff) right on a UDM/UDM-Pro. IMO it makes the most sense to run this on the router, and you can run it in a docker container. If you're looking for a fun hour or two project, check out: https://github.com/boostchicken-dev/udm-utilities/tree/maste...

I'm afraid to ask, but why are people anti ubiquity? I freaking love my udm-pro and am waiting for their cams to come back in stock so I can ditch my nests.

The main reasons for me ditching UBNT has been

• lies about supporting older versions of APs, telling me I need to upgrade to get x-such-feature, and then they support it later on the older hardware. • Various features sold as _coming_soon_, that really take several years to come about. • making more and more of their setup require a total buy-in of the whole infrastructure when I only wanted one piece of it. • It just wan't very reliable. I'd have to reboot all the APs every now and then to get them communicating well again (this seems to be limited to myself and not my friends, but happened on two generations of the UBNT hardware)

But what did them in on the end for me was some version upgrade totally blew up my network, that does depends on different SSIDs mapping to different VLANs, but after the upgrade, they bridged everything together. Found that unacceptable, so I gave up fighting them, dropped in another enterprise vendor, and now things are truely rock solid.

Yes, they give out many enterprise features for a very low cost, and the feature set does far surpass any of the consumer price range gear that they hover their price points around.

OOTH, since I do work with lots of Enterprise gear, I know when used gear is falling off in price to affordable for home levels, and how much more life I can reasonably get from it. Sure, I don't have 802.11ax, but I don't think my last round of UBNT AP buys can upgrade to 802.11ax either, would have had to buy another round of UBNT gear.

Re: Setting up a Pi Hole made my home network faster

#236

Post by zyemuzu »

piperswe wrote: post #233
throwaway2037 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see your point. Real question: In today's world, what is the difference between a TV and a computer monitor + RasPi? I guess the biggest issue will be streaming on services with very strict operating system / browser requirements. For example, can you stream Netflix @ 4K via RasPi? I assume no, due to super strict DRM. It is a little bit surprising to me that the big streaming companies have not creating an open so…

Size, OLED, HDR, and eARC are three things I can't find in a monitor. I don't know of any 55" OLED monitors that support Dolby Vision and can output their audio to my home audio system over eARC. OLED and Dolby Vision are important to me because HDR makes such a huge difference in properly mastered content. eARC is important because my audio system is able to take advantage of Dolby Atmos metadata and I don't want to…

As someone who recently invested in their first AV receiver, surround sound setup, then navigating hacked drivers to get Dolby Atmos, DTS etc working properly on Windows, finding I can't use my Hue strips in Netflix etc because of DRM, realising Plex cannot serve HDR content, having to edit EDID data so my PC would allow 4k/120fps + VRR with my fiber optic cables... I realise that we're living in an unnecessarily complex DRM hell.

Re: Setting up a Pi Hole made my home network faster

#237

Post by no_time »

RachelF wrote: post #143
0daystock wrote: post #2

Won't be long now until IoT and other crap-ware devices catch on to this trend and start hard-coding DNS servers in code, or worse, using DNS encryption to avoid this sort of routine blocking by end-users. I wonder how people are thinking about solving this problem.

Microsoft already does this in Windows 8, 10 and 11 with their "telemetry" servers. The DNS queries for these bypass any of your own DNS settings. They even bypass host file overrides.

On the upside, the endpoints are nicely documented by both MS and independent researchers. Also, Windows enforces packet filtering rules on it's own phoning home so a well configured firewall like SimpleWall will be relatively secure from a spying perspective.

https://www.bsi.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/BSI/Cyber-Si...

https://www.henrypp.org/product/simplewall

Re: Setting up a Pi Hole made my home network faster

#238

Post by c0nsumer »

inetknght wrote: post #207
c0nsumer wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stupid bugs caused me to move away from them, conveniently only days before the breach became public. Bug #1 was when they stopped supporting 32-character SSIDs, so my main network called "Smart Meter Surveillance Network" suddenly was no longer editable. Switching routing platforms is easier than setting up all my devices again. Bug #2 was the one I wrote up here on Reddit ( https://www.reddit.com/r/UNIFI/comments/g…

> I dumped Unifi and went to OPNsense on a fanless PC I'm curious for solutions to: - cheap(ish) rackmount fanless switches or routers with SFP+ - cheap(ish) rackmount PoE - cheap(ish) rackmount low-power servers What do you use?

I don't care about rackmount, personally. I just set things on a wire bakers/food service rack, like one of these: https://www.homedepot.com/p/HDX-Black-4-Tier-Metal-Wire-Shel...

But here's my setup in a nutshell:

- Motorola MB7612 Cable Modem

- Protectli FW4B silent PC as router/gateway

- Synology DS1019+ for storage, Plex, and Pi-hole via Docker

- 2x Rucuks R610 APs running Unleashed firware (off-lease eBay purchases, enterprise grade APs, about $150/ea, both wired/non-mesh)

- Brocade ICX6430-C12 Switch (4x 802.11at PoE, handles the APs, another eBay special, cost around $90)

This is working well for me, and unlike the UniFi stuff I can now pretty easily swap out any piece of it with another brand of the same function and things will be fine. The single ecosystem of Unifi always bothered me a bit.

If I want a new VLAN (or special WLAN) it's a little harder than on UniFi, but it's really just setting it up on OPNsense, defining it on the requisite ports on the switch, and turning up the new SSID (if needed).

I also don't miss Unifi's single pane of glass view either. All the shiny threat stuff isn't particularly actionable, and there's a bunch of gaps (IIRC like how it'd wouldn't have usable timestamps for some things) so I was never able to use it to make decisions.

I run the Synology with a LACP link; that's plenty fast as its more a storage/backup box than anything that needs to be performant. Speeding all that up would just be a matter of replacing the switch and adding a card into the Synology, but I don't need that for now. (I'd probably get a new NAS before that.)

Re: Setting up a Pi Hole made my home network faster

#239

Post by pixxel »

galleywest200 wrote: post #167
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #147

Obviously, people whose products rely on those ads and telemetry, won't be happy and will try to retaliate, for example, by refusing you service. This frequently happens because of my usage of VPNs and ublock. In that case I have an option to quickly turn vpn/ublock off for that specific web site or service. In your case it's not so easy.

In the Pihole interface you have the option to disable the blocking for a few minutes at a time when you absolutely must get somewhere.

Wouldn’t pausing pihole allow, say, a Roku box or “smart” TV to exfiltrate data that was previously blocked? This is why I use a VPN for certain websites to bypass pihole filtering.

Re: Setting up a Pi Hole made my home network faster

#240

Post by charwalker »

Root_Denied wrote: post #214
Brajeshwar wrote: post #188

Pi-Hole is brilliant. I set up[1] one few years back and used for over a year. Here are the issues; - When I'm away from home and traveling, if something goes wrong, the Pi-Hole is usually the single source of that error, and is hard to solve by talking to my wife to walkthrough the settings. - A few websites (India in my case), mostly government ones, do not work when Ads are blocked. Try paying LIC Premium or even…

I also ran into the issue of a wife who didn't like the fact that I had set up a pihole, apparently it blocked a number of shopping websites she was regularly looking at. At the end of the day I looked at a few of the sites with her and whitelisted a couple of them, but basically told her that (based on the lists I was using) if the pihole was blocking the site entirely then it was either straight spam marketing or t…

Similarly, my dad has a few email lists he is part of that route their links through something pihole tends to block, be it tracking or ad based, and I had to work with him to go to the website itself then find the articles he was after. Fully legit otherwise and I eventually found ad whitelisted the tracking domain on his pihole instance. He still says it is vastly worth it vs the ads he sees on his tablet when traveling or at other families homes.
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