Nowadays the internet is pretty much unusable without ad blockers/dns sinkholes
Calling it ad blocking undersells it. The ad network is the delivery path in that report, so blocking at DNS is a security layer, not tidiness. The thing I’m building goes a step further: it holds tracker connections open instead of refusing them, so they waste their own time instead of retrying instantly. Has anyone tried tarpitting at home? I’m curious whether it broke smart TVs or apps that phone home hard.
The problem with tarpitting is that apps will try to download the ads before showing you the content, and you will be more annoyed than before
DNS blockers work so why would I need your solution? I dont care if the sites try to reconnect cause the connection wont work nonetheless
Unbound on OPNsense ftw
I switched to pihole. Just found it… easier.
Absolutely. Remember to enable a cron job in the OpnSense - System > Settings > cron to update the Blocklists. Otherwise you are likely out of date.
Just moved to an OPNsense network. Setting up unbound was so nice and simple. Much preferred over pihole.
Agreed. I used pihole initially when I was first learning networking, but when I got a dedicated machine and installed OPNsense, I learned how much easier so many things can be.
The downside is OPNsense is it’s information light, and a bit inscrutable lol I’m having an issue with my WAN dhcp going offline, seems to be happening on a cadence. My modem is fine, connection is valid. Rebooting the OPNsense box fixes it. Losing my mind a bit but I’ll figure it out 🙃
Try setting a tunable of:
net.link.ether.inet.max_age = 540
By default FreeBSD sets a 20 minute ARP maximum age while many ONT’s set a 9 minute maximum age. This will show up as performance issues initially then cause other issues.
Also Realtek NIC’s are notorious for issues with FreeBSD, so if you are using one replacing it with an Intel one is highly recommended.
I believe it was the realtek NIC and some settings offloading to the hardware I set during troubleshooting. Installed the Realtek driver in the plugins and changed those settings and so far no instability! Thank you for the tunable suggestion though I will also be checking that out!
No problem.
Be sure to set a cron job for updating the DNS Blocklists, running scrubs, smart tests, and trim if you are using a ssd.
I am working on a way to do snapshots for the system as well for super simple restores that are automatically created. Before an update you WILL want to have a snapshot available. Once snapshots are automated I will probably start doing automatic updates. It basically creates a system similar to how an immutable OS works, if something goofs you can simply roll back to a previous working state and pause updates. I previously had a script I setup via a cron job but the system removed the job during an update.
These are huge! Thank you for the suggestions I will get to implementing all of these. The only thing I’ve done so far similar to what’s in this list is backing up to my git repo, which is very nice. Every setting change gets committed. Is that different than snapshotting?
Love blocky. Seems like it flies under the radar.
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I have a finally tuned pihole that offers different blocking for different vLANs on my home network and VPNs, I would not trust a third party for ad blocking. However you do you.
I was watching SomeOrdanryGamers video on this and his pihole did not block all the ads on an ad infected site, but mine could. I have used canyoublockit many times to stress test my system, wish there was something newer though.
Trust it, no.
Is it better than nothing, yes.
Listen, some folks can afford to build and dedicate time and resources to making a pi-hole for their network.
Those who can’t need to know there are alternatives, some are better than others, I’m just sharing information.
I meant no shade, I know it takes a lot of work to do everything I have done for security/ad blocking.
Thanks for the tip. I can’t find pricing on the NextDNS site. Is it free?
Don’t think I have the spoons for things like PiHole.
Edit: found it via web search https://nextdns.io/pricing
It’s free for a limited number of queries per month. Generally enough for one device (depending on personal usage, obviously). Edit: It’ll still function as DNS after that limit, you just won’t get ad blocking and whatnot.
Mullvad has a free ad-blocking DNS you can use, too. I recommend the “base” version: https://mullvad.net/en/help/dns-over-https-and-dns-over-tls
Please know this service will be ending next month.
Well crud. Thanks for the heads-up. First I’ve heard.
Sounds like Quad9 doesn’t actually do ad blocking, so that’s not much of a replacement.
Quad9 is a crap choice though 😥
Why?
It was founded by the Manhattan district attorney and the city of London police force (https://globalcyberalliance.org/history/) and IBM. I know that they say they are now reincorporated as a nonprofit in Switzerland but I find it suspicious that they don’t mention their history on their webpage, the Wikipedia entry doesn’t have a history section and the Global Cyber Alliance doesn’t have a Wikipedia entry either.
I might be paranoid but all this seems weird to me and I don’t trust them.
Thanks very much for the explanation. I’ve installed NextDNS in my phone now and will do other devices as I get to them.
I don’t recommend Mullvad, and I appeal to everyone to stop recommending them. The monies they receive directly funds fascism and is responsible for serious harm to society and erosion of democracy.
FYI you can point your home router to NextDNS and quickly get whole-house coverage that way. This is good for things like smart tvs, Roku/android boxes, kindles etc.
Installing directly on your phone & laptop is best for devices that will travel outside of your home network.
Oh, that’s fantastic advice. Thank you!
