In the near future, Google will be crippling ad blocking software in Google Chrome. While the goal of this is most likely due to their ad-revenue business it will drastically reduce the effectiveness of ad blocking software.
The solution, in my opinion, is to move from Google Chrome to Brave Browser a browser based on Google Chrome but removes Google's invasive features, increases security, has built-in ad-blocking and force HTTPS functionality, and rewards users with BAT cryptocurrency for optionally receiving approved ads.
While Brave Browser is a great solution, it only works while you are using it. Using a network-wide ad blocker like Pi-Hole will protect all your devices including mobile phones, media streaming devices like Apple TV and Nvidia Shield, tablets, and guest devices.
What is Pi-Hole?
Pi-Hole is a free open source product that you can install any Linux device to filter ads across all devices on your network. It is typically installed on a Raspberry Pi and thus the name Pi-Hole.
Pi-Hole acts as a DNS server on your network and returns 0.0.0.0 IP to any request that is used by known ad servers. Pi-Hole subscribes to multiple well-known ad-blocking lists. You can also customize it to enable additional lists as well as lists for spyware sites and intrusive software.
Using a network-wide ad blocker will even block ads in your mobile games.
You can even use a $5 Pi Zero to run Pi-Hole or any Linux server on your network.
What do you need for setting up your own Pi-Hole?
I would personally recommend a Raspberry Pi 3+ which will cost you less than $35 USD and another $5-10 USD for an SD Card. You will also need a USB power cable but can even use a computer to power your Raspberry Pi through a USB port.
You can even put a touchscreen on your Pi-Hole
Pi-Hole is really easy to set up that doesn't require you to be too tech savvy but you should know how to set up a Raspberry Pi and install Raspbian. If you are new to the Raspberry Pi, check out the Raspberry Foundations Help Center.
Raspberry Foundation Help Center
Pi-Hole has fantastic analytics of its performance and an easy to use web interface to configure it once it is up and running on your network.
Pi-Hole Admin Web Interface
From the admin interface, you can monitor performance, and whitelist and blacklist sites. You can also subscribe/unsubscribe to known blocklists. Pi-Hole has a complete audit history of every query on your network and logging if it was blocked or allowed. From there you can whitelist or blacklist entries that either got blocked or made it through.
Once you setup your Pi-Hole you will need to change your routers DHCP service to hand out the Pi-Hole DNS address instead of your normal DNS server. The Pi-Hole is configured to forward any DNS request that isn't cached already to your normal DNS server and return it to your clients.
I highly recommend using CloudFlare's 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1 DNS servers as your forward DNS. They currently operate the fastest DNS on the Internet. You can read more about CloudFlare's DNS here.
Installing Pi-Hole
While installing Pi-Hole is as simple as running the installation script, I would recommend you going through their installation page.
Installation is as simple as:
curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash
Then configure your router's DHCP or use the Pi-Hole's built in DHCP server (make sure you disable your router's DNS if you do this).
Provided you have a Raspberry Pi (or Linux box) up and running already.
That's it!
Watching the stats does get addicting, fair warning.
If you are not using a Raspberry Pi, I do recommend using docker. You can find out more about installing via docker here.