(windows 10 pro)
I have spectrum internet and use their router because I don’t feel like dealing with replacing routers. Meaning the router config isn’t that in depth compared to having your 3rd party router. I use windscribe VPN, how do I get pihole to block all ads and allow me to windscribe on my devices?
Thanks
Windscribe is probably providing your DNS when you connect. It’s likely that it completely bypasses your routers DNS and your pihole.
I’m unfamiliar with windscribe. But I know if I connected to PIA or Nord they would both bypass any DNS settings I had set up in the house.
If the VPN has an option to allow you to specify Dennis servers you could point it to the pie hole but it looks like windscribe already provides ad blocking.
did you intentionally say Dennis server? cause I’m gonna start saying that regardless.
He needs a more intelligent router. Something proper would allow a locally global DNS routing option. Even though the VPN is binding all outgoing traffic, the router itself isn’t directing traffic through the local DNS server before heading out of the network through the tunnel.
I have spectrum, and their provided router/wifi tower thing is a piece of junk.
The Pihole should indeed be the primary DNS.
The DNS of the VPN should be setup somewhere on the Pi Hole as a sort of secondary DNS.
Really all you gotta do, once pihole is running, is configure your router to use the pihole as your DNS server. The router should still be your DHCP server.
I gotta look up which tutorial I used.
Also pihole isn’t super in depth when it comes to ad blocking. It’ll get most stuff, but you’ll still need to rely on your browser, for example, to do some more blocking with stuff like ublock. Like it won’t block YouTube ads, or most ads in streaming services.
Unlock is the way. Also, sometimes IPS routers use ipv6 and pihole does not support it.
Like it won’t block YouTube ads, or most ads in streaming services.
Yeah, this is because those sites host the ads directly. Most ads are served by a third party ad service. When you see a banner ad, the site isn’t hosting that directly; They’re just adding a link to the ad provider, then the ad provider serves the ad. So the site doesn’t need to worry about constantly keeping their ad lists up to date, and the ad server can keep an accurate count of how many ads have been served. But this also means the site doesn’t know which ads are being served, because the site isn’t actually handling that part of it; It’s all going straight from the third party ad server to the viewer. All the pihole does is block that third party connection to the ad server.
But that falls apart with sites like YouTube, which directly host the ads. YouTube already has the infrastructure built to be able to host ads, so it’s no extra work for them to do so. It allows them a greater degree of control over which ads get served when, and to whom. And since there’s no third party serving the ads, you can’t simply block the server that is serving the ads; That would block the YouTube videos too, which defeats the entire point of using YouTube in the first place. To block YouTube ads, you need a browser-based adblocker is which capable of actually interpreting whether the incoming video is an ad, then choosing whether or not to block it. The pihole can’t do that without loading the video itself, which it isn’t set up to do.
deleted by creator
You’re vpn is probably using its own dns servers, does your vpn allow you to change the dns settings?
I’ll have to check, I use windscribe
Windscribe have a free product called control-d DNS which works like pihole but you don’t have to manage it yourself. Just set your router or PC DNS to point to the controld DNS server that suits what you want filtered.
Oh neat I didn’t know about this. It being free means it’s probably limited or something though right?
Free dns hosted elsewhere means they can see your every query and every site you visit. So you’ll be paying with your information. You could just set the DNS in your PC to the local IP of your Pi-hole. That way you won’t need to replace your router. It’ll only work for that single PC though.
I only care about not seeing ads and being able to pirate shit.
You use a different router that lets you control your dns
Sure, are you buying it for me?
No, not my responsibility. I can make some inexpensive recommendations depending on your technical skill
We both know electronics are you get what you pay for
If you know that, then why didn’t you spend any money on a router?
Because I like the comfort of knowing I wouldn’t have to pay to get another one if their router fails
Look if you’re relatively knowledgeable about networking, you can get a great router for like $50 that’ll last years. I’m a fan of mikrotik personally.
Looking at Amazon, what mikrotik is the “best” one?
The issue seems to be Windscribe. You probably need to allow LAN connections and set your custom DNS IP. https://chn.windscribe.net/knowledge-base/articles/how-to-use-custom-dns-in-the-windscribe-app
My wife uses VPN for work. It will bypass the pihole because it does as intended, create an encrypted virtual private network tunnel directly with their server. Pihole can see the client when it logs on to the home network but will then ignore, and won’t be able to monitor any traffic as soon as my wife logs into her works VPN anyway.
With those limited ISP routers, disable dhcp and let the pihole do the dhcp serving. This is how I do it with a raspberry pi to connect all clients and give out the pihole address automatically. It’s better anyway, as the clients data isn’t all piled up into one 3rd party’s router’s IP address.
For VPN check this:
https://pivpn.io/
https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/pihole-with-openvpn-the-easy-way-use-pivpn/7912You need a raspi though, but PiVPN supports openVPN and Wireguard:
https://windscribe.com/features/config-generatorsHow far through the setup did you get? Why do you think it’s not working?
From reading other comments it seems windscribe may be over ruling it or something
Ah, that could very well be the case.
Yes, windscribe vpn sends your DNS traffic to its own servers to prevent your ISP from spying on your traffic. They claim to be able to block ads so why are you also trying to run a pi-hole box?
What sharpiemaker said is your workaround ticket. Configure each device in their network settings to resolve DNS to your local pihole address will scoot all queries to the pihole before windscribe even has the option to make its own decisions.
Some stuff can’t run windscribe like game consoles. I just wanna cover every base of blocking ads
As others have said, if your computer is running the VPN it’s going to bypass the DNS service that your router is trying to use BUT if the pi is set up properly and your router is aimed at it for DNS it should still work to block ads for things like your Xbox or Smart TV or whatever.
You’re correct; A VPN will route all of your DNS traffic through itself, to avoid your ISP snooping on your traffic. Because if the ISP can see your DNS traffic, they can see which sites you’re requesting. Which defeats the entire purpose of the VPN in the first place.
But this also means that a DNS-based adblocker like a pihole will stop working when connected to your VPN, because your device isn’t using the pihole for DNS when it’s connected to the VPN.
See if Windscribe has a way to set your own DNS within the VPN. It’ll probably tell you this is insecure, because they’re imagining a scenario where someone uses something like google or CloudFlare servers (which, again, would allow those DNS servers to see which sites you’re visiting.) This could potentially allow you to point your DNS traffic at your pihole, even while using your VPN. You could also see if Windscribe offers their own adblocking services; Many VPNs do, for exactly the scenario you’re in. They basically run their own version of DNS adblocking, so you’d just need to go enable it in the settings if it’s available.
Lookup “how to add pi hole regex” add them slow, youtube 24hr banned my box, but they work.
Banned your box?
Have an apple box, setup pi hole on my network and my yt account was banned for 24hrs. Every time Id tried to use the app on the apple box it’d give a message. But it was just fine for the browser, not many ads to non on yt or anything else. Lost that fight though because my wife is all about yt on the tv.
