Pi Hole Users

[AngryBeaver]

So just curious how many people out there are using Pi Hole and love it? Have you discovered any clever uses for it outside of the norm? Are you using it for just your local network or are you using it to filter out items for your VPN connections as well?

 

Lastly, are you running it off a Raspberry Pi or are you running it off a virtual machine.

[Unhelpful]

I'll report back this weekend, setting it up on Saturday.

 

Raspberry Pi.

[AngryBeaver]

1 minute ago, JoeyDM said:

I'll report back this weekend, setting it up on Saturday.

 

Raspberry Pi.

Be warned, the entire process takes about... 2 minutes

 

[Unhelpful]

2 minutes ago, AngryBeaver said:

Be warned, the entire process takes about... 2 minutes

 

Oh fuck. 

[Velcade]

22 minutes ago, JoeyDM said:

I'll report back this weekend, setting it up on Saturday.

 

Raspberry Pi.

I'm doing the same.  All the pi hole talk the other day got me interested.  It'll be my first dive into the pi ecosystem.  I'm excited.

[AngryBeaver]

Anyways I have Pi Hole and love it. I have it configured so it also filters out adds on my vpn connections. I have also set it up so my clients are provided the DNS information from my router, instead of just the router handling the DNS portion. This means that I can see which machines are making the queries (good for making sure your kids aren't doing things they shouldn't) instead of just seeing the gateways IP. I haven't tested, but I think you can get that same result by just letting the pi hole server be your DNS and DHCP server.

 

A few cool things about this. I have the cheaper unlimited plan from Verizon. The one that blocks your stream speed to 480p instead of 1080p or whatever. I think the higher one is blocked at 720p TBH. Anyways I have my phones all configured to use my home VPN, which allows the protection from Pi Hole, and since the traffic is encrypted I am not getting blocked by Verizons stupid stream limiting. So I can watch movies in 4k if I desire without ever being throttled.

 

Now to do this you need a beefy upload at home... which is pretty much the limiting factor. My upload speed hangs out around 70-75mbps on my comcast connection. So that means that I cannot get down/up speeds faster than that when connected. Explanation for that is if I am downloading over the VPN then it is using the upload to send me that information, and if I am downloading from the VPN then my traffic is being uploaded to the web from the VPN... so either way.. 75mbps is my limit. I say this, because if you are trying to attempt it with a 5 mbps upload you might be less than happy with the results.

 

Now my setup for Pi hole is pretty simple. I tossed up a VM on a windows 2016 server I have. I used the latest version of Debian with no Gui. I gave the VM 3gb of space on an SSD (figured I would give mere than needed because who knows how big logs would get with my usage) I assigned it 500mb of starting ram and selected Dynamic (incase it needs more).

 

That being said Pi hole doesn't even tough 2% of cpu usage on the single core I gave it... most of the time it is around .1-.4 % cpu usage. It uses about 20-30% of the 500mb of ram I gave it... so I might drop it down to 250mb in the future. That aside the server this is on has 128gb of ram... so it isn't a deal breaker regardless. Looking over statistic numbers it looks like about 20% of queries have been blocked which if you have data caps is a decent amount of data saved (not 20% overall, but still probably 5-7% of your total data if you do a lot of browsing)

 

Another note, if you do decide to use VPN on your phones and have data limits, be advised that using a VPN will increase your data usage by about 10% due to the encryption overhead. Then again, depending on how you use your phone you might recoup a good portion of that by pi hole killing off popups and adds.

[AngryBeaver]

9 minutes ago, Velcade said:

I'm doing the same.  All the pi hole talk the other day got me interested.  It'll be my first dive into the pi ecosystem.  I'm excited.

Honestly, RaspberryPi's are pretty awesome for what they give at that price point. They have ton of projects that are easy and fun. I think their biggest strength is in how they can be used with our kids and youth. I am shocked more schools aren't using them for projects and teaching different things like Python.

 

I am curious just how much horsepower the next version will have. Hopefully they will finally get usb 3.0 support and allow for true gigabit speeds.

[beersykins]

I use it on a VM, helps quite a bit with decluttering sites.

 

There's a few things that it blocks weirdly like ESPN streaming, but it also contains a 5 minute disable type of button too if you have issues like that.

 

The caching piece gives you a good seat of the pants boost if you roll through lots of queries.

[Sauron]

Hadn't heard about this, thanks! I have a couple of raspis but I think I'll install it on my storage server, it's always on anyway.

[Donut417]

Questions

 

1) Do websites detect this as ad block?

2) Do the ad's still use data, I have a data cap so if I can cut ads out of it, then the better? 

3) Does it work as good as Ad Blocker Plus + Ghostery? 

[beersykins]

16 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Questions

1) Some of them, yes.

2) If they're on the blacklist the DNS record resolves to a nonroutable IP (0.0.0.0) so it doesn't transfer any ad data

3) It's just a DNS filter so it's more feature limited than something that restricts data a browser provides to a server.

[AngryBeaver]

17 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Questions

 

1) Do websites detect this as ad block?

2) Do the ad's still use data, I have a data cap so if I can cut ads out of it, then the better? 

3) Does it work as good as Ad Blocker Plus + Ghostery? 

1) Some do, some don't.

2) No they do not, this kills them before they have a chance to load.

3) it is very similar to Ad blocker, but instead of needing to install it on each machine this one server protects your entire network.