Is anyone running one? I saw creative and liratheal mention them, and my brother-in-law has one so I decided to give it a shot. Put basically it's a local DNS server that deliberately fails to return data from known ad servers so it can block ads and tracking metrics at a network level. I'm running mine on a Raspberry Pi 3 and it's more than capable. Overall I'm undecided on it as it can be a bit heavy handed (Laura can't understand why clicking the paid Google result doesn't work any more) but I quite like how it speeds things up and stops me getting annoying targeted ads. The dashboard says it's currently blocking 27.5% of DNS queries, so it goes to show just how much of internet traffic is useless dross
Been running one a while now and love it! I have it on the network running dchp so I didnt have to configure each device. Set static IP's for each device and then spent a bit of time going through the queries in real time whilst the network is being used and filtered out some more crap! Interesting watching all the MS stuff getting blocked lol running about 22% being blocked.
There are good ads and bad ads. Bournemouth Echo website that spins a laptop fan up to max as it tries to process poorly coded shite? Bad. Bit-tech ads relevant to the site, always kept running lightweight, unobtrusive? Good. They still show by the way. But mostly it's nice not to see clickbait and those continuous streams of things advertising products you searched for once. For a prime example go and look at an Arcteryx jacket, see what you think of the price. They will hound you online for weeks to come.
If my old (poss gen 2 B) RPi could hack it I'd really be happy to lose the horrors of the Bournemouth Echo if nothing else.
It will run on any pi, even a zero (although this will require a network adapter). You'll need a 16GB SD card. I followed this guide, which covers all the basics; I'd never used a pi before and it made it effortless. A touch more difficulty making it work with a Virgin Media router as it won't allow a custom DNS, instead you have to let the pi do all the DHCP and you're in business.
Been running one for a while on an ubuntu VM, and more recently hosting another for a buddy. Wouldn't venture out into the big bad internet without it!
Yup. Still running mine. Things I will say about PiHole: Run it in conjunction with a browser based adblocker. Put a firewall/NAT rule in to force devices with hardcoded DNS to go via the PiHole. Curate the blocklists. Make use of the regex functions rather than the e-peen "I have ten bajillion blocked domains". As always, it's DNS. When something doesn't work. It's DNS. Always check the PiHole isn't blocking it first. EG: Got a PiHole and not getting Xbox achievements? The default lists block some of the XBL sites. I'd also say that if you make use of wpa_supplicant.conf and a file ssh in the boot folder of raw Raspbian, you can use a ZeroW without an additional network adaptor. I ran my ZeroW over wifi and experienced no difference in browsing speeds than it running on the 4 it's on now. YMMV, though, depending on number of devices.
Been running mine for a couple of years now and i love it. I used it with BT VDSL, using it with VM now. I use my own router (Asus AC86U) which runs the DHCP in the house and points at the pi-hole. Its run faultlessly for me, currently blocking 18.5% of queries in the house, this was 30% before I reinstalled when the previous SD card died but my daughter got an iPhone at the same time so she wasnt using her adware laden android any more, hence the reduction. I've only ever found 2 sites that i needed to whitelist, everything else works fine. Its perfect for the 20 odd devices in the house, really improves the internet experience. So much so that I find it a massive shock when using the net on 4G out and about - i forget just how much ad spam there is. I wouldn't be without it. I SSH onto mine every few months to update the distribution it runs on, it updates its blocklists automatically.
started using it via pi zero, it works fine over wifi started off with adding our samsung tv to it just to see what it would block, now every thing goes trough it and added a amazon fire tv usb ethernet/power dongle to it. also if anyone has kids who play freebie games with pop-up ads on tablets inc kids fire hds it does a great job of blocking them
Oh! And if you run it on a Pi, set up log2ram to minimise the amount of sdcard writes it does. Also change the assignment of video memory if you install the non-gui raspbian. Edit: I have used this blocklist; https://www.reddit.com/r/oisd_blocklist/comments/dwxgld/dbloisdnl_internets_1_domain_blocklist/
