Hardware Adblocker

mactier

We all know we watch things online that we shouldnt, and we all hate those annouting pop-up pages that try to advertise thigns that are no interest just so these sites can make money or Infect us with malware. Alot of people play games on their phones these days and generally use the free game rather than the paid for game which causes pop-up screens with adds shouwing up in them.
Myself included have tried the various AdBlockers you can download and use, but they tend to be prety rubbish for the most part and with another application on your computer/phone/device it is just another thing to run that is taking away from our processing power (small as it might be)

What im looking to do is create or adapt a bit of software that will turn the Orange PI into a Hardware AdBlocker.

What happens with this is that with the PI connected to the network (preferably via cable into the router) it will handly all requests within the network and filter out anything it identifies as an Advert preventing the call from being requested which will prevent the add from being loaded.

In theory not only will this prevent the add from being loaded but should also help to improve Network and Internet sleep by requesting less information that needs to be rendered. It will act as a sort of Firewall, but without being a firewall.

darqoq

You have two options:
- use OrangePi as a router (with openwrt) and then filter the ads on the router (using dnsmasq, or iptables), but a better option is to just do it on the router.
- use OrangePi as a http-proxy, but then you have to configure all clients (desktop browser, android browers etc.) web-traffic through the OrangePi proxy.

mactier

What im planning is essentially a DNS server that will prevent requests from being sent for the adds, and as a result prevent things being loaded on the pages or where ever they are mean to show..
something like http://www.alternate-dns.com/ but a local hardware option. this will prevent the hassle of having to install things on devices and should speed up connection and internet.
yes you would have to configure the various devices you own or that connect but that shouldn't be a major issue. and i will of course provide a full guide on how to do it if i get it working right.

This wont be a proxy so nothing more than an ip address should need to be set for the Server and the same for the router.

This is at the moment just a concept but is based on a later more complex network idea where the router does the routing and various servers handle what ever they are designed to handle, and once i get my hands on a pi (at some stage) i will be able to see if this works properly..

darqoq

So, you neeed:
1. DNS server on OrangePi (install openwrt + dnsmasq)
more info:
https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=35023

2. And also you have to change DNS server on every client in your LAN.

mactier

but will a standard DNS server thats on the router block content ? this will block content and allow the user to block additional content

mactier

what do you mean, the OPi sits inside or outside the network connected to the router?  and traffic goes thorough this before it hits the internet or visa versa ?it does sound interesting and could be a good route to go for this..

thanks

bhgv

for adblocking it's enougth to edit file "hosts" of your OS. that's all what you need to do for hardware adblocking.
just add there lines like

127.0.0.1  advertistment.server1.com
127.0.0.1  spam.server2.com

and so on

example:

127.0.0.1  1ad.de
127.0.0.1  1cash.net
127.0.0.1  192.com
127.0.0.1  1992.com.112.2o7.net
127.0.0.1  18clicks.com

.. etc
in unixes/android(/macos/ios ?) it is in the /etc , in the windows in the c:/windows/system32/drivers/etc

dx.l

Annoying advertisement - just another thing of capitalism issue.
We need to kill the main reason of advertisement
Kill the capitalism! Hello socialism!

Tina

I do like the idea.
As the openWRT image is not usable at the moment as necessary USB software packages are not available to be downloaded (in LuCI under System/Software). Thus you cannot use the OPI as router for WAN in and LAN out (by using a USB to LAN adapter) nor it is not usable as router for mobile internet (USB tethering as WAN in and LAN out) nor with a USB modem.

It would be great to have the OPI as ad blocking router with the option to choose the tor exit node and full usb support ;)

There is a commercial project based on the banana pi called e-blocker, but it can only handle WAN in and WLAN out :/

sathi.ray

i have never thought about that