- Messages
- 20,214
- Location
- Springfield, Missouri
I went into this a bit on Leo's thread and thought it probably could be its own thread regarding Ad and Malware blocking. Might be a bit much for some of you, but if anyone has questions I'd be happy to answer to the best of my ability.
Pi-hole (https://pi-hole.net/) is a software server you run on your network for filtering out all traffic to known Ad and malware servers on the internet. Basically you route all your home network traffic through it by changing a couple of settings on your home network router and all your computers receive the change to start routing network traffic through pi-hole. When you visit a website, the page loads from sometimes hundreds of website and ip addresses. Pi-hole will look at each of those and if they are in the known Ad or malware database, it will return a 404 or unknown site error for those, but load the rest of the page as normal, filtering out Ads (and potential Malware).
The pi-hole software can run in a few different ways, most popular is to run on a raspberry pi. However, many of the new NAS devices/software (TruNas, Synology, QNAS, Buffalo, etc)will also run applications and/or docker, which lets you install the pi-hole software through their application list or run a docker instance of pi-hole. Also some newer internet routers do have a pi-hole app installed or ability to add the application on the router itself.
A couple of caveats to running a pi-hole:
* You have to be able to change the DNS settings on your network for it to be network wide. You can just change it on one computer, tablet, or phone by changing that device's network settings.
* When you leave your network the pi-hole filtering is no longer available, so if you're on a cell service or at a friends house, or a separate hotspot, you're no longer having your internet browsing filtered.
* If the pi-hole device is turned off or down, your internet browsing will stop working as no DNS lookups will occur. You either need to get that pi-hole device working or change back to your default DNS settings back to automatic on your home network router if the pi-hole can't be fixed at the time. I run two separate pi-hole instances and both ip addresses are in my network configuration, so if one goes down, computers and devices will fall back to the other.
Pi-hole (https://pi-hole.net/) is a software server you run on your network for filtering out all traffic to known Ad and malware servers on the internet. Basically you route all your home network traffic through it by changing a couple of settings on your home network router and all your computers receive the change to start routing network traffic through pi-hole. When you visit a website, the page loads from sometimes hundreds of website and ip addresses. Pi-hole will look at each of those and if they are in the known Ad or malware database, it will return a 404 or unknown site error for those, but load the rest of the page as normal, filtering out Ads (and potential Malware).
The pi-hole software can run in a few different ways, most popular is to run on a raspberry pi. However, many of the new NAS devices/software (TruNas, Synology, QNAS, Buffalo, etc)will also run applications and/or docker, which lets you install the pi-hole software through their application list or run a docker instance of pi-hole. Also some newer internet routers do have a pi-hole app installed or ability to add the application on the router itself.
A couple of caveats to running a pi-hole:
* You have to be able to change the DNS settings on your network for it to be network wide. You can just change it on one computer, tablet, or phone by changing that device's network settings.
* When you leave your network the pi-hole filtering is no longer available, so if you're on a cell service or at a friends house, or a separate hotspot, you're no longer having your internet browsing filtered.
* If the pi-hole device is turned off or down, your internet browsing will stop working as no DNS lookups will occur. You either need to get that pi-hole device working or change back to your default DNS settings back to automatic on your home network router if the pi-hole can't be fixed at the time. I run two separate pi-hole instances and both ip addresses are in my network configuration, so if one goes down, computers and devices will fall back to the other.