Pi Hole tips and advice please.

[Paul Drawmer]

Just ordered a Raspberry Pi to set up as a pi-hole.

I understand that I can't stop the youtube ads when viewing on a TV, but don't understand why. Please can someone explain for a non techie?

Taking the opportunity to re-do some cabling at the same time. Will it matter where the Pi is situated on the network?

[popeofmick]

I have mine attached via LAN to my Sky router with a static IP address. Unfortunately I can't direct the whole network through it as Sky have locked down the DNS server choice.

I have fire TV and Smart TVs throughout the house set up to use the Pi Hole as the DNS and on the most part it works well.

ITV player and All4 services stream ad free and this is great, any browsing on my phone is also ad free when using the WiFi.

YouTube however does not work I believe it's because how YouTube serves its ads. They are embedded to a certain extent in the stream so no ad no video. I have to disable the Pi hole when watching Youtube on my fire TVs as it sometimes prevents videos starting altogether or delays the stream starting.

[somouk]

As above, YouTube embed the ads so there is no different domain to block that will just block those ads.

With regards to not being able to direct the whole network through the pi hole. Just turn off DHCP on the Sky router and put a DHCP daemon on the PiHole so you can control your DNS.

[colin79666]

Won’t really matter where it sits. DNS traffic is tiny, latency matters more to it than bandwidth. If your router will let you set the dhcp dns option then use it to make clients use the pihole, otherwise you have to manually set the dns server on everything or make the pihole the dhcp sever (which can have cons or conflict if you can’t turn dhcp off on the router).

[somouk]

Pi hole already has DHCP on it, you just need to enable it and disable DHCP on your Sky router, should take seconds.

[Paul Drawmer]

Thanks for the responses everyone.

I'm with BT - just checked and I can get to turn DHCP off. It's a BT hub 6A

[ARHarh]

somouk said:

Pi hole already has DHCP on it, you just need to enable it and disable DHCP on your Sky router, should take seconds.

This exactly, just remeber to put your router IP in the gateway settings. I always forget and wonder why it doesn't work

I run my pihole at the other end of my house to the router, connected via a 50m long lan cable, with the DHCP server enabled never had an issue with it, aprt from my stupidity when messing with settings.

[Paul Drawmer]

ARHarh said:

This exactly, just remeber to put your router IP in the gateway settings. I always forget and wonder why it doesn't work

I run my pihole at the other end of my house to the router, connected via a 50m long lan cable, with the DHCP server enabled never had an issue with it, aprt from my stupidity when messing with settings.

Errm, OK but how do I find the router IP, and where are the gateway settings you are referring to? (Might help if I waited until I actually had the stuff here!)

[Baldchap]

Paul Drawmer said:

ARHarh said:

This exactly, just remeber to put your router IP in the gateway settings. I always forget and wonder why it doesn't work

I run my pihole at the other end of my house to the router, connected via a 50m long lan cable, with the DHCP server enabled never had an issue with it, aprt from my stupidity when messing with settings.

Errm, OK but how do I find the router IP, and where are the gateway settings you are referring to? (Might help if I waited until I actually had the stuff here!)

Go to start, run, type 'cmd'.

On the black window type 'ipconfig /all'

The settings will be listed.

[colin79666]

Paul Drawmer said:

Errm, OK but how do I find the router IP, and where are the gateway settings you are referring to? (Might help if I waited until I actually had the stuff here!)

Assuming you have a Windows PC open a command prompt or PowerShell windows and run ipconfig /all
Default gateway and router are the same. DNS will likely also be the same just now as the BT home hub will be doing it all. Probably 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.1.254.

[somouk]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Is that the browser plugin?

Browser plugins and DNS blockers work in very different ways.

[mw88]

popeofmick said:

I have mine attached via LAN to my Sky router with a static IP address. Unfortunately I can't direct the whole network through it as Sky have locked down the DNS server choice.

Enable DHCP on the PiHole, and disable DHCP on the Sky Router - That's how I've got mine setup to direct all traffic through the PiHole.

[Paul Drawmer]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

This puzzles me too.
I use adblock which is fine for youtube viewing on the PC - it blocks all youtube ads just fine.

However, I'd like to block the ads on the TV when I view via the inbuilt Youtube smart TV app.
I do understand that pi-hole won't block these ads. But how does adblock work so well on youtube on the PC if the ads are within the content?

[Church of Noise]

In a nutshell:

Pi-Hole blocks on domain basis, say eg 'ads.youtube.com'

Ublock Origin and the like - so browser plugins - focus on the level of website elements, eg elements that contain the word 'ad' in their name

As Google/Youtube is smart enough not to serve ads from a domain like 'ads.youtube.com' but rather from the same domain as the videos, there is no ways Pi-Hole can identify them. A browser can look deeper than that.

Hth

[SwissJonese]

popeofmick said:

ITV player and All4 services stream ad free and this is great, any browsing on my phone is also ad free when using the WiFi.

Do you have anything that works for ITV Player, the Domain/RegEx I used to use as for last 2 months no longer works, ITV player just shows black screen?

[Paul Drawmer]

Church of Noise said:

In a nutshell:

Pi-Hole blocks on domain basis, say eg 'ads.youtube.com'

Ublock Origin and the like - so browser plugins - focus on the level of website elements, eg elements that contain the word 'ad' in their name

As Google/Youtube is smart enough not to serve ads from a domain like 'ads.youtube.com' but rather from the same domain as the videos, there is no ways Pi-Hole can identify them. A browser can look deeper than that.

Hth

Thanks, now I get it.

[Church of Noise]

Because a lot of unwanted activity *is* served from a specific domain (certain companies offer these services to other players for instance), and additionally, by blocking out certain domains, you 're not only able to block ads but also tracking, spyware, malware, ...
Next to that, indeed ublock origin and the like only offer some protection in browsers. Your computer also runs other software. And besides that, there are indeed other devices on your network (for instance, I don't use my nVidia Shield for browsing, only for Netflix, youtube etc, and that is very chatty indeed).

To give you an example, these are two of the most often blocked domains on my network for instance:
mobile.pipe.aria.microsoft.com
ssl.google-analytics.com
(not the top two but definitely in the top 10).

Despite having Ublock on my browsers, these each have around 1000 queries per 24 hours on my network.
Overall, I am above 40000 DNS queries per 24 hours on my network (15 devices), of which more than 50% are blocked.
Make of that what you will.

[colin79666]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

1. pihole is faster than browser extensions (you don’t download the content and then hide it)
2. You can’t run a browser extension on your smart tvs, iot smart bulbs etc that are sending all sorts of information off to their overlord in China.

[Ydnaroo]

Tip for once you get things running. Install log2ram to save on SD card wear.

https://mcuoneclipse.com/2019/04/01/log2ram-extend...

[paulrockliffe]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

You can setup a VPN on the PiHole and connect your mobile device through that if you want.

It's no big deal, but the risk is that if you're away and your power goes off you'll lose the internet without it being obvious why.