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Comment by SpikeDad | Hacker News Reader

A nice alternative which allows you to keep using your router's own software or routers not compatible with open source software is PI-HOLE (https://pi-hole.net). Provides the same DNS level blocking with a lot more information and features.

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I've been thinking of getting a Pi-Hole for a while, but also have a router running OpenWRT. Are there any advantages/disadvantages to using a Pi-Hole vs. using an AdBlock package on the router?

Off the top of my head the Adblock might use up CPU cycles on the router, which could cause slower throughput and shorten the lifespan of your router.

You get a lot more info from Pi-Hole about what IPs and URLs your devices are accessing. Lots of good information outside the ad blocking realm - which devices are phoning home and where and how often is just one example.

I used an adblock package in pfSense but not OpenWRT. The issues I had with pfSense's package was it wasn't nearly as configurable as pi-hole and it used up a bit too many resources on the Soekris 5505 box. I had to uninstall it because it took too many resources.

I ended up installing Docker on my laptop, grabbing the Pi-Hole container, and configuring my laptop to use the docker container as the DNS server.

So far this has worked very well. Wherever I go, I have pihole running in the background. I can access the web interface and do everything I could do on the rasp pi-hole, without the extra hardware. It does take a minute or two to start up in the background after logging in though.

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