Adblock vs Simple adBlock

Installing and Using OpenWrt
#1

Hi,

I am a pretty newbee regards LEDE, running successfully on a Archer C7 V2, now i want to start using adblock, going through the forums i found what it seems two different versions Adblock and Simple adBlock but what i miss is a document which tells me which one is better to use and why, pro and cons?

Also my router is setup as an AP (providing WIFI), connected from lan1 to my ISP router and its not serving at a DHCP server, my ISP router is providing the DHCP.
i don't know if that is the best setup and maybe i have to change that, but my ISP router also have 4 devices connected to lan ports.

Now i was reading something about wan and dnsmasq so i don't know if that will work for my config.

So question is can i use adblock while not running any DHCP as it seems combined with DNS (dnsmasq) or even being dnsmasq it still can be separate sorry if this sounds rather dumb, but my network knowledge is not that high i am an electrical engineering guy.

2nd. which service would be better to use for my type of router adblock or Simple Adblock?

3rd. when configured how can i test if it works, any log files, test pages ?

Thanks for your help

I am in love already with LEDE and with fast path module my router is amazingly fast in wifi.

1 Like
#2

I believe you would have to configure the clients that connect to the network to use the Archer C7 as a DNS server. The Archer would be set to use the ISP router as a DNS server. I haven't tried that, and may not work. I believe that both those adblockers work by setting the names of the respective websites to resolve to the local host.

#3

No, they return a simple 'NXDOMAIN', for further information see here

#4

I checked the info on the link that dibdot provided but i still do not find answers to my questions.

zero-conf like automatic installation & setup, usually no manual changes needed <<< so i don't have to use DHCP on this same router?

automatically selects dnsmasq, unbound or bind as dns backend <<< if this is auto set and in my wireless connection setting i do not use dhcp as it comes from ISP router will it work?

Which then also comes again to 3rd question how to test it, which log files to check?

Thanks for help

#5

adblock doesn't belong to DHCP at all ... it's all about DNS hijacking. At minimum you need a running dns backend on your LEDE box. For dnsmasq configuration without DHCP see here.

if adblock is running fire up e.g. a nslookup query ...

nslookup doubleclick.net
Server: 127.0.0.1
Address: 127.0.0.1#53

** server can't find doubleclick.net: NXDOMAIN
** server can't find doubleclick.net: NXDOMAIN

for log file checking use logread ... e.g. logread -e "dnsmasq" or logread -e "adblock"

1 Like
[Solved] Adblock on LEDE 17.01.4: does not load blocklist sources
#6

I hope @dibdot can elaborate, but here's my viewpoint on differences between simple-adblock and adblock:

Adblock is better in the following:

  • Adblock supports both dnsmasq and unbound as principal dns server, while simple-adblock only supports dnsmasq.
  • Adblock supports more complex blacklists thru its powerful processing engine.
  • (Might need a correction on that) Adblock supports checking if the domain is blacklisted from WebUI.
  • All the ad-blocking innovation is happening at Adblock.
  • Adblock is included in LEDE stable repo.
  • Adblock is written by a great developer.

Having said all that, I still pursued publishing simple-adblock in the LEDE repo (after adblock has already been published), because it's based on a simpler script originally published by bole5 from OpenWrt forums and thusly:

  • simple-adblock can be fully-configured by LEDE/OpenWrt native uci command.
  • because of the above, Web UI for simple-adblock was easy to implement and I hope is easier to use.
  • because it doesn't support some complex blacklists, its processing of supported blacklists is much faster.
  • it starts processing downloaded blacklists while the next in line is being downloaded, leading to even better start up times.
  • the code/functionality is static, I have no plans nor any features to implement.
  • simple-adblock has not been back-ported to the 17.x LEDE releases and is only available in snapshot releases or if you add my own repo to your current install. It should be available in LEDE 18.x when it drops.
  • while I greatly benefitted from not only having the source code of adblock, but also on multiple occasions personal advise from @dibdot, I'm not a developer, so I may have cut corners on certain aspects or the code might not be as neat.
6 Likes
#7

Hi,
I am using the openwrt (linksys wrt1200ac) router as an AP (providing WIFI), connected from lan1 to my ISP router and its not serving at a DHCP server, my ISP router is providing the DHCP .
I am a nobble (lawyer actually) so i couldn't understand how should i set up my router to get adblock working . i am guessing that all my DNS queries are solved by the ISP router and thus no blocking by adblock .
Is there a tutorial to setup adblock in this AP setup ? or should i resort to change the AP setup to some other setup .
Any help would be great. thanks
(and the link Using DNS without using DHCP link is broken. so i timemachined it . Here is webarchive link http://web.archive.org/web/20170424085856/https://lede-project.org/docs/user-guide/dns_configuration).
Here is the configuration screen shot -

merge_from_ofoct
merge_from_ofoct.jpg2078×6170 916 KB

#8

There are dedicated support threads for both adblock and simple-adblock, I'd recommend you post there.

Unable to make adblock working