Tag: wifi

Getting rid of ads with Pi-hole

I’ve been using Pi-hole running on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ for the past 2 1/2 years, and it has really spoilt me to the extent that I have forgotten what ads on web pages and mobile apps look like (the limited travel in the last couple of years has also helped). It’s pretty effective in getting rid of the pop-up mobile ads and the in page banner ads on all devices connected to the wifi.

The setup process is quite simple if you have your own router or at least change the DNS server on the home router:

  • First off, get hold of a Raspberry Pi (even the model Zero is powerful enough for the Pi-hole), and the necessary peripherals like a case, SD card, charger & LAN cable. There are many readymade kits with the OS preinstalled sold online including Amazon, which saves a good deal of time.
  • Initial setup is easier with a monitor & keyboard + mouse attached to the Pi. Once this is done you can connect it to your router using a LAN cable and access it through a Telnet client/mobile app like Putty on any of your devices in the home network.
  • Next, you need to install Pi-hole on the Pi (you can do it during the setup itself), and configure the router to use the Pi as your DNS server. If you are stuck without admin access to your router, then you may need to configure each device to use the Pi separately.
  • You can also install mobile apps to manage the Raspberry & Pi-hole quite easily through your phone. There are multiple apps available for both Android & iOS.

Once everything is setup, you should have an ad free experience on your devices (not all ads can be blocked of course). I’ve found about 10-15% of the queries on my home network getting blocked, and this includes devices like Android & iPhones, iPads, Android TV, Amazon Echo, Homepods & Windows laptops of course.

Troubleshooting torrent network problems with routers

Wondering why the wifi or LAN connection keeps misbehaving and disconnecting on your shiny new router when you try to download torrents or stream high quality movies on your local network? I was facing the same issue with my TP Link W8968 modem cum wifi router that I got recently for my home broadband connection. Some research through Google indicated that this was not specific to my router model, and was likely to be related to torrents overwhelming the NAT tables on the low end routers. This could happen for both the wireless and wired network, as my experiments.

I finally found the solution through 2 different threads that suggested that the NAT and IGMP proxy be disabled on the router. One was for my specific router model:

Please try to disable : 
“Enable Fullcone NAT:” & “Enable IGMP Proxy:” 
under : Network -> WAN Settings -> WAN Service Setup -> Advance option.
Disabling the above option fix my TD-W8968 freezing problem.

The other was in the Apple forums:

*****Disable IGMP Proxy Setting from your router (Verizon Fios, etc) *****

I tried this, and haven’t had any issues for the last 4 days with the torrents downloading comfortably overnight. Earlier, I used to set the torrents to download and find out the next morning that the wireless network had dropped off and the router had stopped responding. So, give it a shot and see if it works. After all, this is a lot less expensive and hassle free compared to replacing your existing router.