So, check this little idea that I have - I want to browse the internet without all sorts of unscrupulous actors collecting every little bit of metadata on me and my family they can possibly get their hands on.
    • DefederateLemmyMl@feddit.nlEnglish
      21·
      17 days ago

      Misleading statement. It doesn’t block “traffic”, it blocks DNS requests… you don’t know how much traffic this corresponds to.

      • Scratch@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        16 days ago

        You can easily find out. 2 machines (even virtual machines) one set it’s DNS to the PiHole, one not.

        Both hit the same sites in the same order. Compare network traffic.

        • DefederateLemmyMl@feddit.nlEnglish
          1·
          15 days ago

          That’s only for a single case comparison. You can’t draw statistically meaningful conclusions about what percentage of traffic the pihole has blocked over a longer period of time.

      • xavier666@lemm.eeEnglish
        11·
        17 days ago

        Correct. The payload of DNS requests is tiny compared to, say requesting a webpage. So there might not be a huge decrease of bandwidth usage reduction. However, having 66.6% less DNS requests is still a win. The router/gateway doesn’t have to work that hard because of the dropped requests.

        • DefederateLemmyMl@feddit.nlEnglish
          2·
          17 days ago

          It isn’t so much about the payload of the DNS requests, but about the content that would have been loaded if the DNS request hadn’t been blocked.

          If you load a page that has 100kB of useful information, but 1MB of banner ads and trackers … you’ve blocked a lot more than 66%. But if you block 1MB of banner ads on a page that hosts a 200MB video, you’ve blocked a lot less.

          Also a 66% blocked percentage seems very high. I have installed pihole on 2 networks, and I’m seeing 1.7% on my own network, but I do run uBlock on almost everything which catches most stuff before it reaches the pihole, and 25% on the other network.

          • mac@lemm.eeEnglish
            1·
            16 days ago

            I run a handful of instances across different networks, 1.7% is suspiciously low, you should make sure you’ve got the right lists. I like HageZi’s

        • rusticus@lemm.eeEnglish
          03·
          16 days ago

          Of course, because ads have zero bandwidth. /s

          Are you an idiot?

          • xavier666@lemm.eeEnglish
            1·
            15 days ago

            As per the article

            on my own network a whopping 66.6% of all traffic is blocked

            I stated it’s actually 66.6% DNS requests being blocked, not the raw bandwidth utilization. Raw bandwidth savings (by not downloading the non-zero ads) would be much lesser.

            Can’t we be nicer on the internet?

            • rusticus@lemm.eeEnglish
              0·
              15 days ago

              No, raw bandwidth savings would likely be very significant. You do realize that for many webpages the ads are most of the bandwidth? On my network (I have capped internet so this is important) if I run dns ad blocking my total bandwidth is 40% less.

              • sonstwas@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                1·
                15 days ago

                I’m not sure whether it makes sense trying to discuss with you but let’s try…

                You couldn’t know how much traffic you saved because you didn’t load the ad. The ad could be 1KB, 1MB or 1GB, but because you didn’t load it you wouldn’t know it’s size. Without knowing it’s size, you wouldn’t be able to calculate the savings.

                As mentioned somewhere is in the thread you would have to directly compare two machines visiting the same pages and even then it’s probably only approximate because both machines might get served different ads.

                • rusticus@lemm.eeEnglish
                  1·
                  15 days ago

                  I’ve compared average monthly bandwidth before and after implementation of dns based ad blocking and it has reduced my usage from anywhere from 33% to 45%.

                  They have been implying that ad blocking only saves the dns request, which is the most ridiculous ignorant claim I’ve ever seen.

  • Donut@piefed.socialEnglish
    4·
    17 days ago

    Don’t fall for the trap that they recommend an expensive Pi 5: I am running Pi-hole on a Pi 2 but you can basically run this on obsolete hardware, whether that’s a Pi or a PC/laptop

  • President@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    3·
    17 days ago

    I’ve been thinking of setting one up for a while, if I have a home server would I be better off hosting it on that or as a separate device? What are the alternatives to a raspberry pi? They’ve shot up in price over the years.

    • normalexit@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      17 days ago

      If you have a server running, I wouldn’t buy more hardware. They have good example documentation for just such a configuration:

      https://docs.pi-hole.net/docker/

      If your server already has those ports bound (specifically the DNS port 53) you are going to have to get creative; otherwise it’ll work well!

      Worst case, a cheapo pi 3 will do the job. At one point I had it running on a pi zero, so hardware requirements are pretty low.

        • StarkZarn@infosec.pubEnglish
          1·
          16 days ago

          That’s not how that works. network_mode: host shares the network namespace with the container host, so it doesn’t do any NAT, it only exists on the host’s IP. It would be akin to running a natively installed app, rather than in a container. macvlan networking is what gives a container its own IP on the logical network, without the layer of NAT that the default bridge mode networking that docker typically does.

    • Brokkr@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      17 days ago

      I put it onto my home server and it is working great. I can’t tell you about all the options, but it was so easy to start another VM for it that I didn’t look at other options too carefully.

    • curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      1·
      17 days ago

      Definitely dont bother with buying a pi if you’ve got other hardware.

      I have one physical (a 3b I had no use for anymore), and two running as containers. The containers do most of the heavy lifting, since they are so much faster than a pi they respond far faster, but the physical is nice for when I take down the clusters for maintenance (or when I lose power, the clusters shut down after about 3 minutes, the pi will keep going for a while on UPS).

  • randombullet@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    17 days ago

    I use adguard home in conjunction with NextDNS.

    I find adguard a little better in the UI department. Have it in a docker container so it’s a set and forget.

      • Billegh@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        15 days ago

        Additionally you have control over it. Sure, you don’t need local since you’re using it in conjunction with the internet. You control it though. You decide entirely what you want to trust and don’t have to delegate that trust as much.

  • yaroto98@lemmy.orgEnglish
    11·
    17 days ago

    I recommend having two. Otherwise your home internet goes down everytime you update or reboot or it crashes.

    • LupusBlackfur@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      17 days ago

      Interesting… And this is not a criticism, simply an observation…

      I’ve a single Pihole instance running on a RPi 4 and have experienced not a single instance of any of the 3 probs you mention. Except, of course, the very few minutes it takes for a reboot which I can schedule and am aware when it’s happening…

      🤷‍♂️