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Comment by scorxn | Hacker News Reader

I'd have to add Pi-hole to this list. Anytime I browse the web on another network, I'm reminded just how much crippling ad garbage it's sparing me.

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I use a VPN into my home network at all times for exactly this reason.

Also useful to circumvent iOS's sorry state of ad blocking. I use an ad blocker on my device, too, but the pi-hole takes care of 90% of the stuff that annoys me.

I've donated a few times; consider buying the devs a cup of coffee!

If you want to avoid the rigamarole of self hosting, I recommend NextDNS. It's a paid DNS service with tons of customizability (i.e. Ad blocking) and visibility (i.e. logs)

NextDNS is always free for DNS. It also provides 300,000 queries free every month dor working with ad/tracker blocking configurations. Once this limit is exceeded, DNS continues to work but blocking doesn’t until the next month or until its paid for. The paid subscription is about USD 2 a month or USD 20 a year.

Pi-hole has been an absolutely life-saver to our household. It's typically blocking ~50% of traffic.

Using someone else's device and off my network is entirely scary.

I guess I really should just set one up shouldn't I...

I highly recommend it to anyone considering it.

But, pro-tip, use a machine that has an ssd (or other real) drive. Having your network DNS go down because of a bad or corrupted sd card will drive you bonkers.

Sincerely, Bonkers

Do you have advice how to replace the default Internet provider router? I have Xfinity's now and it terminates the coax, does switching, wifi, and does various firewall functions. I assume you have to buy a XXXX, disable everything on the Xfinity box and turn it into a passthrough switch. What is a good XXXX here?

I've never used Comcast's/Xfinity's own hardware. Always bought my own modem and router, which has generally worked out well, outside of when I'm (rarely) having quirky service issues and can't easily prove that it's not my hardware.

If you don't want to do that and keep their gateway, I'd expect you can run pi-hole anyway, and if you're not getting the behavior you want (e.g., the gateway seems to be intercepting dns or something), you can try DNS-over-HTTPS.

I have spectrum, but same in principal here. Having familiarity with hardware I like is why I opt to provide my own modem and router. If anyone is considering going that route, I've had really good luck with ubiquiti networks unifi line. Really great quality for what you pay.

You don't, really. You can (usually) change the DNS resolver your provided router uses to an internal IP, then statically assign that IP to your pi-hole. It's about 5 minutes in a GUI web panel, give or take the googling to find and navigate that GUI for your specific ISP-provided router.

That said a better router is usually worth it, I like my Netgear Nighthawk because I'm a bit lazy, someone else probably has a better suggestion.

> You don't, really. You can (usually) change the DNS resolver your provided router uses to an internal IP, then statically assign that IP to your pi-hole.

This is totally right, and that is how I have my network configured. I have a firewall behind a dumb cable modem, and I set the DNS server for the network on that device. When machines configure w/ DHCP, they get assigned the router's address for dns resolution, which then delegates to the pi-hole. That's all specific to my hardware though.

You also have to ensure the Xfinity box's DHCP server doesn't lease the Pihole's IP address to a random device. Like set a 1-250 range for DHCP and give the Pi 251.

Firewalla has been a good experience for me so far.

I live in France so obviously I won't help you directly. I guess however that there is a whole community of people in the US who documented "how to replace the box from provider X by the device Y".

Depending on the details, it can go from plugging your fibre directly into a small factor PC, to not being able to do it because even bridging is not available on the box and everything is proprietary.

I for instance replaced the shitty Livebox 3 from my French provider Orange with a PC running Debian. Before that it was a Ubiquity Edge Router 4.

Orange make it difficult to change the device, but not impossible. I would love them to just provide my IP though a standard authenticated DHCP request.

> use a machine that has an ssd -- a bad or corrupted sd card will drive you bonkers

I've seen this said many times, and it matches my experience as well. But why should an SSD be more reliable than an SD card when the underlying technology (flash memory) is identical? Or is it not identical? Or it is due to the more sophisticated controller of an SSD?

I believe the comment was referring to running Pi-Hole on something other than a RaspberryPi since they are known for SD file system corruption. It has happened to my Pi-Hole and music server running on separate R-Pis. https://hackaday.com/2022/03/09/raspberry-pi-and-the-story-o... Use a throwaway PC that you have kicking around, or run it virtualized...

SD cards are the storage equivalent of writing on a one-ply sheet of toilet paper. Nowhere near identical to SSDs

That's not the only thing that can go wrong. It takes a properly babysat server in general. My end result with Pihole was, my wife occasionally asked why her internet wasn't working (for whatever reason of the day), and eventually I took it out.

Haha yea, everytime i read about pihole i have these thoughts, but then i think to myself: “ah, one more thing i will have to admin…”.

But anyway, i still have a spare rasbpi lying around somewhere…

That was a thought of mine, but I've literally never had to service or maintain or admin my r-pi. It just hums along in the background. I realize this is anecdotal, but worth mentioning.

The payoff (usable, perhaps even enjoyable, internet) is worth any admin it might create.

To others considering it, it's a bit of a pain in the are to install and nowhere near as effective as client-side as blocking via unlock/AdAway/NewPipe etc

I prefer AdGuard Home for it’s simplicity. Used PiHole before and AdGuard Home is so much simpler for me

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