AdGuard

2021, Aug 31

This all started when I was looking for TVs and I learned at how expensive they've gotten from when I last remembered. Long story short, apparently smart TV's now have ads built into their menu system. I believe this is done to help offset the costs, but considering the costs of some of these TVs I'm not sure; maybe it's just greed. At any rate, I couldn't stand for the fact that I'd be displayed ads everywhere, so this lead me to a forum where someone was mentioning (Adguard)[https://adguard.com/en/welcome.html?utm_source=stef0uwashere] as a way to set up an ad-blocker for your entire network. I thought this was brilliant since it would get rid of all the ads for any connected device once and for all.

In most configurations, Adguard is set up with piHole, and it blocks all ad server domains from being hit. (piHole)[https://pi-hole.net/?utm_source=stef0uwashere] uses a raspberry pi to act as a DNS and prevents known and unwanted ad and tracking servers from being contacted with. I did not have a raspberry pi, and wanted to make do with what I had, so here is where I improvised.

This was my setup;

  • HomeHub 3000
  • HASSIO in a virtual box on OSX

What I learned when setting this up;

  • HomeHub3000 will not use an internal DNS address when DHCP is enabled, so this meant I had to disable HomeHub3000 DHCP
  • AdGuard has a built-in DHCP server so the network now uses AdGuard to assign/manage IPs. AdGuard had to be set up with the ethernet interface and not the virtual box interface
  • By disabling HomeHub3000's DHCP, the network defaults to the next available DHCP magically (This concerned me that I'd be locked out)
  • Bell's DNS, 207.164.234.193, had to be set up in Adguard's upstream DNS so my network would still work (I don't get why bell is so restrictive)
  • After properly configuring AdGuard, I had to restart everything on the network; HomeAssistant, HomeHub3000, and devices (or manually release the DHCP lease)
  • The DNS blocklist can be augmented with the (oisd.nl)[https://oisd.nl?utm_source=stef0uwashere] list, which has almost 1M rules to combat ad networks
  • (d3ward.github.io/toolz)[d3ward.github.io/toolz?utm_source=stef0uwashere] can be used to test how well your setup is working by testing common ad networks
  • This configuration is very fragile and has caused numerous issues already. Since the DHCP is now on the OSX as a virtual machine, if the network goes down for any reason, I need to boot up the server and make sure the virtual machine is booted up before before any other connecting device. Otherwise, the other devices will end up trying to lease an IP, but fails because the DHCP is down...I will be moving off this narrow configuration as soon as I can to avoid having this type of configuration.
# automation