Pi-Hole or something else for network ad blocking?
I've been aware of pi-hole for a while now, but never bothered with it because I do most web browsing on a laptop where browser extensions like uBlock origin are good enough. However, with multiple streaming services starting to insert adds into my paid subscriptions, I'm looking to upgrade to a network blocker that will also cover the apps on my smart TV.
I run most of my self hosted services on a proxmox server, so I'd like something that'll run as an LXC container or a VM. I'm also vaguely aware that various competing applications have come out since pi-hole first gained popularity. Is pi-hole still the best thing going, or are there better options?
Just wanted to chime in and say that with a pihole you can also have encryption if you point to a local resolver like cloudflared or unbound.
My pihole forwards everything to a cloudflared service running on 127.0.0.1:5353 to encrypt all my outgoing DNS queries, it was really easy to setup: https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/dns/cloudflared/
That's a bunch of extra manual work though - both the initial setup, plus keeping the extra software packages up-to-date. With AdGuard Home, it's already configured to use DoH by default.
Not within the network, but translating regular dns to DoH before heading out to WAN keeps your browsing a little bit more private from your isp. Marginal, but it is a difference.
It's not just a little bit more private... It's a lot more private. Some ISPs have been known to build advertising profiles using DNS data. It's trivial for them to see all DNS lookups and even modify the responses, since it's both unencrypted and unauthenticated by default.
As an AdGuard home user for more than a few years, I switched back to Pihole because it wasn’t really any better. It was also easier to pair pihole with Unbound.
It works well! I have one AdGuardHome instance running on my home server and one running on a Raspberry Pi, both using Docker. Having two prevents the internet from breaking in case I have to shut down one of them for some reason.