NETWAYS Blog

There are two ways to motivate people: intrinsic, motivation stems from the person her/himself or extrinsic, where an external force pushes a person to do something.
I myself experienced this external motivation when I bought a new TV and wanted to test the YouTube-Application.
Using ublock origin on both private and work-related devices, I was surprised by the amount of advertisements being displayed – before and during the video.

I don’t want to dive to deep into the discussion whether ads and tracking are good or bad, but show you a way how to get rid of most of the ads in your network.
One of the most basic protocol of the internet is DNS. It resolves Domain Names (like nws.netways.de) that you type into your browser to IP Adresses (185.11.252.146) which the browser then invokes. A common analogy would be „phone directory of the Internet“. This is the part we’re going to have closer look on.
Most ad blocking techniques use lists of hosts which deliver the ads (like noisy.popups.com) to your device and direct your device to 127.0.0.1 (localhost) instead. You’re essentially calling yourself.
For web browsers, there are very popular plugins available, even for (rooted) mobile phones similar solutions are known, but have you ever tried to root your TV or Apple device and side load an application?
This is exactly the point where pi-hole is getting handy.
It uses aforementioned lists to block ads but not only for the device you installed an adblocker on but for all devices in your network.
You just have to use pihole as DNS-Server in your network – if you can’t configure a specific DNS fuss-free on your device or router you might want to use pi-hole as your DHCP-Server.
This way it pushes itself as DNS to your devices.
If you want to have a look at it, there are several very good installation guides in multiple languages available.
Feel free to invest one hour of setting it up and enjoy a new ad free network and don’t forget to support the project 🙂