Changing local laptop client DNS settings to Google (8.8.8.8) can often make a BIG difference in terms of the speed of web browser connections. I found this to be an issue on school networks at times as well… the DNS server wouldn’t be super-responsive.
It’s not excruciatingly painful for most sites, but it is for some. So, what are the results? Well, they are mixed.įirst of all, the responsiveness of Internet queries is slower using my Pi Hole / home brew DNS server with blocklists. “ Dashboard – Pi Hole” ( CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer Since I’m less interested in analyzing dashboard reports of client network traffic and more interested in just BLOCKING ADS, I decided to configure my Pi Hole setup with this limited configuration. The downside is you can’t see all your different network clients, they all appear as a single client. It turns out Pi Hole can work FINE with Google WiFi if you just set its IP address as the Google WiFi / Nest primary DNS server address. In part because this is a test and I’m not 100% sold yet that I want to keep this as my permanent networking solution for DNS filtering, I didn’t want to change my home networking IP addressing configuration in such a wonky way. The suggested workaround is to ONLY have the Google WiFi provide an IP address to your Raspberry Pi, and then have all other network clients use the Pi as their DHCP server. Because of the limitations of the Google WiFi advanced networking configuration, you can’t specify a separate DHCP server directly. I read a number of support forums and Reddit threads on this topic, and ultimately found some of my best information in this December 2019 MBreviews article. Here’s where I ran into a challenge: Google WiFi (now branded as “Nest WiFi”) has a simple configuration and management interface, with some acknowledged limitations. (I’ve run my Pi “ headless,” which might sound macabre but is actually both cool and efficient.) I needed to add a small unmanaged switch to our home network configuration by adding this additional computer (and that item is on the Amazon list too) but I actually could have skipped the last two items, which are needed if I want to connect the Raspberry Pi directly to a monitor.
All the requisite parts arrived Friday and Saturday via Amazon. Our son helped me put together this list. My friend and ADE brother Larry Anderson shared a post on Facebook about a week ago touting the benefits of Pi Hole running on Raspberry Pi, and I was intrigued enough to do a little research and order my own hardware late last week. In this post, I’ll share a few of my lessons learned.
Alas, however, my weekend geeky forays into this solution have been underwhelming, although still informative and not without hope.
RASPBERRY PI AD BLOCKER SOFTWARE
Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a relatively inexpensive and straightforward way to block all the advertisements in YouTube and other apps on the AppleTV? (Besides paying a monthly subscription for YouTube Premium?!) Wouldn’t it be great if this same method provided advertisement and malware blocking for ALL Internet-connected devices on your home network? The open source software program Pi Hole, which can run in several configurations including on a less than $100 Raspberry Pi computer, offers up these tantalizing promises.
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