PiHole should be a must

If we spend enough time on TE, we keep getting more and more ideas for tinkering with our home networks. While SBC like raspberry pi or some openwrt router can run an ad-blocker, vpn etc.., these tasks can be very ram intensive (pihole) or cpu intesive (vpn). We can also soon out-grow the abilities of our hardware.

With an all in one unit like openwrt hardware router we need to reconfigure network everytime we decide to **upgrade** the inbuilt wifi. With time i have learnt its best to have a wired network which is independent of the wifi, since this keeps network always up while we can endlessly tinker.

My advise for newcomers who would like to learn while tinkering is to first consider how much they want to spend. The premiums on new RPi4 (8GB) is so much we can easily buy an used x86 PC and a 8-port smart switch for within 15K. So what I suggest is that once at about a 15K budget, its best to go for x86 PC + smart switch with proxmox which can consolidate many seperate features like nas, router, adblocker etc. using a single machine, which will prove a much more flexible and tinker-able system for your money.

Its like one ring to rule all the applications guys ;)
 

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If we spend enough time on TE, we keep getting more and more ideas for tinkering with our home networks. While SBC like raspberry pi or some openwrt router can run an ad-blocker, vpn etc.., these tasks can be very ram intensive (pihole) or cpu intesive (vpn). We can also soon out-grow the abilities of our hardware.

With an all in one unit like openwrt hardware router we need to reconfigure network everytime we decide to **upgrade** the inbuilt wifi. With time i have learnt its best to have a wired network which is independent of the wifi, since this keeps network always up while we can endlessly tinker.

My advise for newcomers who would like to learn while tinkering is to first consider how much they want to spend. The premiums on new RPi4 (8GB) is so much we can easily buy an used x86 PC and a 8-port smart switch for within 15K. So what I suggest is that once at about a 15K budget, its best to go for x86 PC + smart switch with proxmox which can consolidate many seperate features like nas, router, adblocker etc. using a single machine, which will prove a much more flexible and tinker-able system for your money.

Its like one ring to rule all the applications guys ;)
i have collected most most of pieces of the puzzle
cheap am4 board, intel nic ,my old 1700x , psu used cabinet and i am waiting for some confirmation from community regarding mediatek wifi 6e cards and support on maybe openwrt and pfsense
 
i have collected most most of pieces of the puzzle
cheap am4 board, intel nic ,my old 1700x , psu used cabinet and i am waiting for some confirmation from community regarding mediatek wifi 6e cards and support on maybe openwrt and pfsense
If you go for proxmox route (openwrt x86 on proxmox) with a smart switch or multiple lan cards and you dont need vlans (multiple networks) on the AX wifi router it is not an issue at all. The wifi will all become dumb **access points** . Vlan functionality is required with oem firmware or openwrt on AX router, only if we need seperate networks on wifi also.
 
If you go for proxmox route (openwrt x86 on proxmox) with a smart switch or multiple lan cards and you dont need vlans (multiple networks) on the AX wifi router it is not an issue at all. The wifi will all become dumb **access points** . Vlan functionality is required with oem firmware or openwrt on AX router, only if we need seperate networks on wifi also.
Hey, what's the role of the smart switch here? How useful is it compared to an unmanaged switch?
 
I'm having trouble updating my pihole through pihole -up command. I keep getting this error ," [✗] Update local cache of available packages
Error: Unable to update package cache. Please try "sudo apt update"
Output of sudo apt update is as below
up-err.jpg
 
I'm having trouble updating my pihole through pihole -up command. I keep getting this error ," [✗] Update local cache of available packages
Error: Unable to update package cache. Please try "sudo apt update"
Output of sudo apt update is as below
View attachment 159113
Nothing to do with pihole. Your repo is missing the keys. Try the command mentioned here to retrieve the missing keys -
 
Anybody now seeing ads (just before loading any content, 10 sec ad) in hotstar after their recent changes to the UI/UX? This is on Web/PC, I'm unsure about the app at this point.
 
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