(Part 2) Top products from r/pihole

The most difficult part is planning out which devices go where and how to best segment services from one another. Some folks with extensive labs and equipment get quite granular with their approach, potentially having separate VLANs for everything from storage (NFS, SMB, etc.) traffic to networking devices and servers. I'm FAR from an expert, so my goal was to start simply and begin by getting this IoT traffic separated. Using (redundant) Pi-hole(s) it's quite easy to see how much traffic is generated from a single Roku device, we're seeing 10+ thousand requests daily for various Roku logging servers, plus additional Google traffic related to various smart home speakers (Google Home Mini x4) and on and on it goes.

I'd also encourage you to redirect DNS traffic for devices (such as the Google Home Minis), as they come with hard-coded DNS servers which will work around your Piholes, or other DNS blacklisting efforts. That's a separate project which can be implemented on your router with some sNAT & dNAT rules which will invisibly redirect traffic to your chosen DNS servers, be it locally or upstream. I'm achieving these things by running Unbound with Pi-hole, as my own little in-house, recursive DNS servers, rather than using the typical upstream DNS, provided by either your ISP, or Cloudflare (1.1.1.1 & 1.0.0.1), Google (8.8.8.8 & 8.8.4.4) or Quad9 (9.9.9.9 & 149.112.112.112)... but that's up to you to decide what's best for your own network.

Here's a great video to hopefully get you started. I can't seem to find the blog post I was thinking of, but I learned a lot from this video, then you just have to translate specifics to your type of router and networking gear:

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ElI8QeYbZQ

Hope this helps. Please let us know how you make out, or if I was unclear in my ramblings above. I'm still learning too, so please keep in mind that I'm anything of an expert, but I enjoy tinkering and am trying to take our data privacy seriously. It's a constant trade-off to be able to utilize much of today's technology. We want to be able to continue controlling lights, locks and things remotely and/or with our voice, so the least I could do was try and restrict the en masse data collection.

EDIT: What type of router are you using? Not sure who mentioned having a Meraki device. I'm using an Edgerouter 12 with UniFi wireless access point (UAP-AC-LR) and a Cisco SG300-20 small business switch, but the ER12 also had its own 8-port built in switch, and I've also got an ultra cheap TP-Link 8-port switch (TL-SG108E), as it was the absolute cheapest way for me to get a budget Gbps switch that supported advanced features that a truly managed switch would have, such as QoS, VLANs, port mirroring, LAG groups and such.

okay, is there a list somewhere of routers that give you that capability? was looking on amazon at some of the gigabit routers. https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Nighthawk-AC1750-Gigabit-Ethernet/dp/B00R2AZLD2/ref=sr_1_3?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1524849878&sr=1-3&keywords=gigabit+router this one looked pretty good speed and price wise.

I've had zero problems over the years using pfsense (originally m0n0wall) with various pieces of equipment. If the uptime isn't listed in hundreds of days, the hardware (or driver support) isn't reliable! I started with an "ancient-even-back-then" Pentium 233Mhz MMX and a few bits of support kit (Linksys PCI NICs, IDE to CF adapter, ISA VGA card in case I needed direct access for some reason). Couldn't ever bear to throw it away, pretty sure it would only need a new AT power supply to put back in service: http://i.imgur.com/obsY5Su.jpg

So, the first step is starting with something reliable as a base. An old LGA775 sounds perfect! Don't go nuts trying to find dual integrated Intel gigabit NICs or whatever...unless maybe you're trying to start a small WISP or something! I believe most "problems" would stem from regularly pushing consumer equipment to the edge of their maximum throughput: most folks are not likely to do that (otherwise they'll likely have the budget for the proper hardware).

For example: I used the built-in adapter because I'm cheap and lazy, and knew I might need to swap it out...but it's never given a bit of trouble so far (knock on wood). For reference, the two pieces I'm currently pushing data through without issue (~119 day uptime at the moment (~1.2TB down, ~250GB up), ~500-1000 active connection on average, load average is almost always measured as 0.0x):

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JB40498 (Realtek 8111GR I think)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001CY0P7G (Intel 82574L I think)

I have found that others recommended this (never used myself):

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BMZHX2

I ended up buying the $17 dollar version on the link below. It took care of all my wireless needs for everyone in the house. The owner was supplying a Linksys WGT54G wireless router that was discontinued in 2004. Every five minutes the device has to be reset. The management company came to look at it and said there a nothing wrong with it. I asked him the difference between a router and switch, but he was unable to explain the difference. Thats when I ordered from Amazon.


Tenda N300 Wireless Wi-Fi Router - Easy Setup, Up tp 300Mbps (N301) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D3GO8R4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_sHZyDbD60DCC3

I have this one and it works just fine. Using it with a Pi Zero as well. Looks like you can get it for around $3 shipped.

> It pings that often even if the request is not blocked. Pings all day constantly except sometimes it stops completely for about 12 hours. Then it continues for days.

That behaviour is downright bizarre! The ASUS RT-AC56U is a good entry level custom-firmware router, assuming you don't have a connection speed over 100Mbps. Personally, I run an RT-AC68U on Toastman Tomato firmware myself, which is good for <300Mbps connections.

if thats too noisy these things work fine and are pretty close to silent

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B003XN24GY

i have one running on mine

additionally you can put one of these on the CPU

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ZC043CE

An SUA1000 will provide you with 670watts, at full load it would last 6 minutes and at half load 20 minutes. The SUA1500 is 980watts, however I should note that the 1000 should be more then enough for your usecase, and you can probably get away with something much smaller for your load. The thing to take away from getting a battery backup is the power circuit does get hot, the battery backup units do have fans to keep this circuit cool, but some people like to hook up deep cycle marine batteries to increase uptime, however this of course puts more strain on the circuit which can cause it to fail.

Something like this cyberpower 255w should be enough for your needs and has a USB port you can use to trigger a shutdown across 1 pi, or use the first pi as a NUT to also shut down the second.

depends where you live...in EU you can get very, very capable wifi access point for 25€ https://www.alza.at/mikrotik-cap-lite-d5255835.htm

or this one for 18€ which looks so cheap that it's suspicious but it's got the full blown firmware version: https://www.alza.at/mikrotik-rb931-2nd-d5255846.htm

or this one which is powered by mini usb and I use it as mobile hotspot sometimes because it lasts > 24h with powerbank

https://www.amazon.com/MikroTik-RB941-2nD-RouterBoard-2-4GHz-Access/dp/B00UR758BM?ref_=ast_bbp_dp

two pis + two sdcards + two power supplies might be bit cheaper than that but will never match a dedicated device in terms of reliability IMO.

Don't get me wrong, I have been playing with RPIs for quite a while and currently have pi-hole, but I would never use it as my core routing device.

Wow. That is bargain priced. I also came across https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-EdgeMax-EdgeRouter-ERLite-3-Ethernet/dp/B00CPRVF5K It seems to have 2x the RAM, but 2 fewer ports. The ports don't concern me much, most of my network is on wifi so would only use 1 port on the ERLite-3 for my home network. It costs a little more, but still under $100.

This is now officially off-topic, so I think I may do some spelunking on /r/networking or /r/homenetworking. Perhaps post a query there and with some luck it won't turn into a religious war.

Why not get a 8 port switch [like this DLink](TP-Link 8-Port Gigabit Ethernet Desktop Switch (TL-SG108) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A121WN6/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_p69JybQ01JRN6) that would give you more ports and possibly take stuff off wifi that doesn't need to be

SD and MicroSD - USB 3 - $11 - https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B006T9B6R2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I've got a relay from amazon connected to some of the GPIO pins, then a simple website I made on the pie that when I press a button on it, it flips the relay. The relay is wired to the door open button and does the same thing as me physically pressing the button in the garage. I also have it monitoring for an amazon dash button press that will also trigger the relay, that is by the front door so I can open the garage on my way out the door if I need.

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However, this has all been running for 4+ years, I tried to review how I pieced it all together about a year ago and couldn't remember or figure out all the pieces, but it still continues to work, so I can't give much more detail than that sorry.

It'd work but that adapter has a lot of bad reviews on Amazon. I'd suggest a more expensive (but properly working) adapter like this if you want extra (powered) USB ports, this if you don't need full-size USB ports, or this if you want a HAT instead.