this post was submitted on 05 May 2025
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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.
From my understanding, uBlock doesn’t have any impact on a pihole. Any browser-based ad blocker will work by detecting the ads after the DNS requests have been made. A properly functioning pihole would intercept the ads before the ad blocker. 1.7% seems suspiciously low; My primary pihole averages anywhere from 25-50%, depending on usage.
Your understanding is not correct. For page elements, uBlock prevents the domain from even trying to load, so no DNS request is ever made. Only if you go directly to an ad domain from the url bar (who does that?), does a DNS request get made.
For example, on my own webserver, I created a simple static html file with an tag pointing to an ad domain that I know is blocked on uBlock as well as on the pihole. Like so:
Loading that page, uBlock showed 1 blocked ad on that page, pihole only logged a DNS request to my webserver, not to
track.adtrue.com.Once I turned off uBlock in the browser and reloaded the page, pihole did log the request to
track.adtrue.comand blocked it. My browser showed a broken image.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.
Yeah no ublock origin really won't block all that many, the chattiest DNS comes from apps and smart devices, windows and mac laptops etc.
I also run ublock on all of my browsers
I was averaging ~1-2% blocked using the firebog and a few other lists, I also have ublock origin on everything I can. Added hagezi's 'pro plus' list last month and it's up to 39% blocked.