G+_Hagos Rush Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 Pi-Hole is Awesome! You guys may already know about this but I just found about about a week or so ago. A fantastic ad blocking service for your entire network. I understand some people will hate this because well, it blocks the ads from tracking me and prevents them from making money...from tracking me. No more will I have to see what I was just looking at on Amazon.com on a completely unrelated page. TLDR or write: use your raspberry PI has a DNS server on your network. Block adds. End of story. No it does not slow down your internet - I have gigabit and still get gigabit. It even blocks adds within apps on your phone. Its insane. https://pi-hole.net Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Matt Koglin Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 How long have you been using this, and have you had any issues? I'm interested to hear reviews from anybody who's using Pi-hole! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Pat Hacker Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 Nice Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_David Peach Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 I've used it for about 8 months. A couple of video streaming services playing on my Roku. I forget which ones, but I think one or two of the major network Roku channels. In Pi-Hole you can whitelist what you want to allow through. I'm not against ads. I'm against garbage that my kids shouldn't be subjected to at their age. I run it on an original Pi B. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Rud Dog Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 I would also like to hear any real world reports on the Pi-Hole performance before ordering one. Also would be nice to include a diagram to show the Ethernet physical connections points. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_David Peach Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 Rud Dog, why do you need a reason to buy a Raspberry Pi? (Or another one to add to the stable as the case may be). I'm not entirely sure how the software works, but hardware-wise, it is just a single Ethernet cable going into the Pi. Hagos Rush mentions that it does not slow down his gigabit connection even though the RPi's networking is capped at 100 Mb (and I'm not sure there is actually that much throughput). So apparently not everything is being processed through the Pi. Beyond that, I don't know what is going on. But really, Rud Dog, everyone needs at least 1 more Raspberry Pi in their life. David Peach is off to order another one for a Mame cabinet build. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Rud Dog Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 David Peach I am convinced not to order my first RP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_David Peach Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 Rud Dog, you have been infected with Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ prejudice against Raspberry Pis. They are wonderful for some things. Arduinos are wonderful for others. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Rud Dog Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 David Peach I have most of the popular IOT devices with the exception of the RP. Just did my preliminary review and the first thing I noticed, some call out 16GB or 32GB what is this referring to RAM or the card you insert. Quarantined. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_David Peach Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 I would assume it is the SD card. RAM is only 1 GB. Pay no more than $35 in the US for the board itself. That is the official price from official retailers. Unlike Arduinos, you won't find them any cheaper, but you can certainly find them much more expensive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Hagos Rush Posted June 9, 2017 Author Share Posted June 9, 2017 Matt Koglin I have been using this for about a week and a half and literally have not run into any issues. Its very odd seeing all the ads disappear from iPhone apps Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Hagos Rush Posted June 9, 2017 Author Share Posted June 9, 2017 Rud DogDavid Peach The Pi does not get all of the traffic. It only filters known ad-holes and blocks those. All other traffic is routed normally. Below you will see the Ras-Pi in action. I will show a drawing of my network shortly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Hagos Rush Posted June 9, 2017 Author Share Posted June 9, 2017 here is my average network speed - given most speed test locations are unable to handle the speeds. I get anywhere from the speeds you see to 900+ on BOTH the up and down Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Rud Dog Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 Hagos Rush Looking forward to seeing how you physically connect up. And you might want to be careful with those speeds the wires must be getting hot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Hagos Rush Posted June 9, 2017 Author Share Posted June 9, 2017 Rud Dog To answer one of your other questions - 16/32 refers to the SD card as David Peach has pointed out. The Pi only has 1GB of RAM. Now don't poke fun at my drawing skills haha In case its confusing: 1. Device navigates to webpage 2a - Routing Status - Device > AP > Switch > Ras Pi > Switch > USG > Internet and back A managed switch is a plus in this case because the traffic knows exactly where/what port it is going to and thus cuts down on the time albeit milliseconds As for heat..I currently have Cat7 cables as I will be upgrading the hardware to cat 7 very soon so they handle the transmissions well. But it is a very warm time behind my TV ill tell you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Matt Koglin Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 Thanks +Hagos Rush, I attempted to configure the software this morning on my home server (Ubuntu, not a Rasp Pi), but ran into some issues. Pretty sure it has to do with the VPN I'm running on the same machine. There's likely a way to get it working but I'm more afraid of borking my network than interested in getting the two of them to play well together. I may attempt to install on spare Pi 2 soon. Pi-hole would make a great topic for the show though! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Hagos Rush Posted June 9, 2017 Author Share Posted June 9, 2017 Matt Koglin what VPN are you running? And trust me when I say I am in he same boat. The wife approval rating has to be high for the network to go down lol. Did you point your router back to the computer as it’s DNS? Once you do that it will automatically route your traffic. I used mine with PIA VPN but it does defeat the purpose and you get ads as it routes a black hole through your network. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Matt Koglin Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 AirVPN (which rocks, BTW). I didn't point the router. Instead I just configured my desktop's network settings to use my Ubuntu server's IP as my DNS. As soon as I did that there was no DNS resolution at all, but I have been able to access the Pi-hole admin page via HTTP. Honestly, if I can take an old Pi 2 and have it do the same thing without worrying about the VPN on the server, that would be a fine solution. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Reese Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 If I'm not mistaken, the Pi is just a DNS server in this case. DNS is a very small portion of your normal Internet traffic. Plus, the traffic doesn't typically go THROUGH the DNS server. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Hagos Rush Posted June 9, 2017 Author Share Posted June 9, 2017 Matt Koglin the Pi 2 can handle it just fine. It doesn’t take that much horse power to run. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Hagos Rush Posted June 9, 2017 Author Share Posted June 9, 2017 Ben Reese that’s correct. It’s an additional DNS (primary) in my case that just blocks certain things. If it had to take all my traffic I would be sufficiently screwed haha Too much data moving Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Matt Koglin Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 Yup Ben Reese it only handles DNS requests, not all traffic. pi-hole.net - How Much Traffic Can Pi-hole Handle? Thanks again Hagos Rush I will try the Pi 2 and report back :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Hagos Rush Posted June 9, 2017 Author Share Posted June 9, 2017 Matt Koglin glad I could help. Don’t forget the white list: discourse.pi-hole.net - Commonly Whitelisted Domains - FAQs - Pi-hole Userspace Of course your choice what you choose Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jared Alexander Posted June 11, 2017 Share Posted June 11, 2017 I've been using PiHole for a few months and have had no issues. It works great and does not slow anything down. I have my router set to use the pi as the dns server and google dns set in PiHole as the forwarder. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Matt Koglin Posted June 13, 2017 Share Posted June 13, 2017 Hagos Rush great tip on the whitelist, thanks! (How racist does that sounds, BTW). For anybody interested it was as easy as: - Installing a fresh image of Raspbian on a 2 Model B - Configuring the Pi with a static IP address (https://www.modmypi.com/blog/how-to-give-your-raspberry-pi-a-static-ip-address-update) - Installing Pi-Hole with a single command, and - Using the Pi's IP in my router's config as the DNS server Also, I'd love to see Padre & Bryan do an episode on this software, and use their tapping gear from episode 317 to make see what Pi-Hole does. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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