Looking for the best solution to block ads/trackers on my entire home network.
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This is the lazy option that just works, the free tier is decent but their paid one is so cheap that you can run it for years with the price of a single Rapberry Pi
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I have one SSID with pihole (which I use), and one without. Works pretty well, if you're ok with a VLAN-aware network.
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As an extra step you can block DNS requests to external services from within your network to prevent devices trying to reach hardcoded for example Google DNS servers to bypass your filtering which isn't uncommon with some IoT/streaming devices. Best to both block the known IPs as well as have DNS redirects for the urls that point back to your firewall at whatever IP it's using to serve DNS from. There is a list called DoH servers by name or something like that which you can add to the blocklist to try and prevent usage of any DNS but your own.
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NextDNS or many other DoH services that are out there (I personally recommend Mullvad).
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I install some local adblocker to their devices and they don’t see those ads
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You can setup DHCP to give the DNS address to every device automatically. Even heavily locked down routers sometimes have the option, but I guess OP will have to try that out.
Pihole also has a built in DHCP, which you can enable and use as long as you disable the router one.
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Only Apple the filtering to your MAC addresses.
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For a mobile device / TV, sure.
For a browser on a computer, uBlock or AdNauseum will fix that.
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I use PfSense and it's great
