Where did I come up with this?
About a week ago I went to a car boot sale and found a TP-link router for 7 pounds and had an idea for a project! I wanted to see what I could do with this new router, as I have heard that privacy routers were a thing and that would be very useful, considering the amount of ads websites display in this day and age. Also, the router would be set-up in my room, meaning that the WIFI connection was also stronger and I have no ads to skip.
The research process
I went ahead and started researching the idea and found out about pi-hole (https://pi-hole.net/), a network-wide ad blocker that acts as a DNS sinkhole, meaning it blocks ads, trackers, and malicious domains. Instead of using browser-based ad protection,pi-hole works at the DNS level, preventing unwanted content across all connected devices.
The setup
What I used was my main computer (running Ubuntu) to actually run pi-hole and route the traffic from my router, through the pi-hole DNS server, and of course the router. I set up the router to create a whole new network, supplying bandwidth from my current router that provides WIFI to the whole house, but has a different subnet, so the devices on the first network don't interact with the ones on the new one. Here is a simple network diagram for this:
How I did this was connecting a LAN output cable from my main router into the WAN port of my new router, then connecting to my new router's network, configuring the DHCP settings and running a few commands in cmd in order to ensure the IP addresses assigned on both networks are different, preventing any interference with data transmission. I then set the the DNS of my router as the pi-hole DNS, allowing all the data on the network to flow through there, meaning no ads.
Testing if it works and it's effectiveness
This is the actual pi-hole dashboard where you can see the data and requests being filtered through it, acting like a sort of filter, taking out the particles you don't need and leaving the fluid to flow through, and this is it working and processing queries!
I went ahead and tried out an ad blocker test at https://adblock-tester.com/ and managed to score 100/100 points which is amazing.
I also tried out a network speed test to see if I was getting a good amount of Mbps, and it was great.
Final thoughts on the project
Here is what the actual router looks like with some stickers I put on it:
A problem with this setup is that pi-hole only allows data through the
network, as long as my main computer is on, which is not all the time,
so I needed to add a secondary DNS server, so I added Google. A way I
could solve this problem is by investing in a new Raspberry pi that can
run this set up 24/7, so I am on the lookout for one right now to fix
that (I could always use the one I have but it is a bit overkill). I
also want to set up a VPN to make it even more secure, but for what I
have right now I am satisfied, that will probably be my next addition
after getting a raspberry pi to host this.
Overall, I think this was a fun project that really allowed me to expand my knowledge about how routers behave, and how networks can be manipulated as a whole, a lot easier than I thought. I believe this was an invaluable learning experience considering the effort it took. I recommend you try this for yourself as it is really fun but also rewarding in the end.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask away.
