RASPBERRY PI AD BLOCKER INSTALL
RASPBERRY PI AD BLOCKER UPDATE
RASPBERRY PI AD BLOCKER SOFTWARE

Statistically speaking our household is averaging 15% of queries blocked and a spike over a bad weather weekend of 30% blocked. The Pi Hole project even offers some ad-heavy websites to test to check the difference before and after, and it is incredible the difference. Otherwise, the Pi has been chugging along at 8% memory utilization, and the network is considerably faster when surfing the web. I have had to whitelist 1 or 2 URLs which was blocking a reset of an Alexa which had an issue, and a video conferencing system had all sorts of tracking and metrics built in which were causing some havoc until I whitelisted them. The Pi-Hole has been running for 1 month now on my home network. Considering all the functionality and that my entire network is now routing through my Raspberry Pi 2, the performance is phenomenal running average 8% memory utilization. The level of detail and functionality is impressive and adds confidence.

RASPBERRY PI AD BLOCKER UPDATE

We can whitelist or blacklist URLs, query log files, update the URL block list, and all sorts of reporting options. The menu bar on the left side of the Dashboard offers even more functionality. The dashboard is a friendly interface which greets you with some fantastic statistics and visualizations right off the bat. Now that my network is funneling through the newly configured Pi Hole it's time to take a look at the Dashboard. That's it! Now every device that connects to my router is now taking advantage of Pi Hole. I configured my router to use the Pi Hole IP address as the new DNS server for my network. Once Pi Hole is running, it is time to switch over my network to the Pi Hole. After installing Docker on the Raspberry Pi it was an easy git clone, a couple of modifications to select my timezone and preferred DNS servers ( CloudFlare 1.1.1.1), then docker-compose up, and we were in business.

RASPBERRY PI AD BLOCKER INSTALL

The Pi Hole Docker install is well documented and quite nicely done. The Pi Hole project already has a nice Docker project utilizing compose. Like any other project I run everything in a Docker container, and this project should be no different. I am entirely confident to rely my entire home infrastructure on a $35 Raspberry Pi running an Open Source project. The risk of the project is a single Raspberry Pi is now the single point of failure for my network, so reliability becomes a concern. Installing Pi Hole should increase performance and security simultaneously for our home network. So instead of loading the ad from the real domain, the blank page from the Pi is downloaded, thus “blocking” the ad or metric. This Web server just serves up a blank page. How does the Pi Hole work though? The Pi Hole answers your computer’s DNS queries and if it is a domain on the blacklist, it sends the request to the Pi Web server. Now I get to decide how I server metrics and ads as well. Since I switched to SimpleAnalytics to stop tracking people on our websites I thought to apply the same principle to our home network.

The Pi Hole blocks Ads, Malware, and overreaching metrics collection network-wide. Managing all your devices is cumbersome, hard to maintain, and leaves a gaping hole for network-connected devices like TV's, Printers, Alexa's, Sonos, or any other smart devices which connect to your network.

RASPBERRY PI AD BLOCKER SOFTWARE

Traditional Ad Blockers are usually Browser Plugins or software utilities on every computer on your network. This Raspberry Pi project Pi Hole is the gatekeeper to our home network. This time it is entirely different (I always say this). The rainy day finally arrived when I stumbled across a new project. Our household has a few Raspberry Pi's doing various tasks from tracking airplanes flying overhead, measuring temperature humidity in our house, Docker projects, and several more hidden away for a rainy day.

Raspberry pi ad blocker