Pi-hole? Huh? DNS? What I am going on about now you may ask. Pi-hole is billed as a “Network-wide Ad Blocking,” a black hole for Internet Advertisements. While it is that, it can be much much more – I can also help you secure your network to some extent.

For me, I am using it to help filter out some advertisements, but also using it to block tracking websites, known malware sites, as well as tracking what my internal clients are talking to.

Want to know how effective a tool like Pi-hole can be, let’s look at the 24-hour stats for my home network below. Keep in mind that there are 5 of us here, I work from home, and we stream everything on Rokus.

• 70+ Clients
• 40,000+ queries
• 6,000+ queries block
• 15.6% blocked
• 155,999 domains currently blacklisted

It is pretty crazy how busy a home network can actually be, and these are the things that you may not see unless you run your own DNS server at home.

I am running this on a Raspberry Pi Model B from 2012, so you don’t need much power to run Pi-hole. It was a simple installed, their website documents it well, and it helps to keep my home network “a little more secure.” Just remember to block port 53 on your firewall expect from your Pi-holes, this way your kids don’t try to to get around your internal DNS servers.