this post was submitted on 05 May 2025
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Okay. I’m convinced.
Misleading statement. It doesn't block "traffic", it blocks DNS requests... you don't know how much traffic this corresponds to.
Correct. The payload of DNS requests is tiny compared to, say requesting a webpage. So there might not be a huge decrease of bandwidth usage reduction. However, having 66.6% less DNS requests is still a win. The router/gateway doesn't have to work that hard because of the dropped requests.
It isn't so much about the payload of the DNS requests, but about the content that would have been loaded if the DNS request hadn't been blocked.
If you load a page that has 100kB of useful information, but 1MB of banner ads and trackers ... you've blocked a lot more than 66%. But if you block 1MB of banner ads on a page that hosts a 200MB video, you've blocked a lot less.
Also a 66% blocked percentage seems very high. I have installed pihole on 2 networks, and I'm seeing 1.7% on my own network, but I do run uBlock on almost everything which catches most stuff before it reaches the pihole, and 25% on the other network.
I run a handful of instances across different networks, 1.7% is suspiciously low, you should make sure you've got the right lists. I like HageZi's
I use firebog's ticked lists, from what I can tell from the logs ad domains are blocked just fine.
But as I said, I have ublock origin on all my browsers which already catches most ads before they reach pihole, and I don't use mobile a lot when I'm at home. Oh, and I also use Linux, so no Microsoft telemetry to block either.
1.7% makes perfect sense to me.