One week of using pihole (my setup + review)

Hi folks,
I have started using pihole as a network wide adblock, would love to know any feedback on the setup, how to improve/optimise or just your thoughts…

Hardware – Raspberry Pi Zero 2W + 16GB SD Card
Software – Raspberry Pi OS lite + Pihole + Tailscale

Things that i have done –

• apart from the default Steven Black list of domains, I have added 2 lists –
  
  • HaGeZi Multi Pro
  • HaGeZi TIF
• assigned static ip from router and added corresponding local dns record from the pihole web dashboard to all my known devices – this helps to know which device in this house is the biggest ad/DNS menace?" 😂 (screenshot attached)
• added my pi as a subnet router on tailscale –
  • the pi is already added as dns on the tailscale
  • this subnet broadcast with the static ip reservation of devices – helps me access my entire network away from home, without port forwarding or unwanted access to internet.
• added a start script on the pi on ssh, this gives the current stats of the pi (screenshot attached)
• enabled pihole's built-in HTTPS with a locally trusted Pi-hole CA certificate – this combined with Tailscale subnet routing + pihole's local DNS makes https://pi.hole/admin works securely both at home and remotely. (i wanted https and a good domain, i hate http warnings 😂)

Experience

• Disney+ Hotstar or similar apps – on playing a video, one ad is played, but no more ads during entire video, the yellow markers on the timeline showing ads, also don't show up.
• Since i am using my isp's router (JioFibre)
  • it doesn't allow to pin ipv6 dns
  • to counter this for now – i have pinned the dns manually on my devices to use the pi. only done for phones, laptops, not tv because no option was there – need to figure out a better way to handle this but works for now!
• on my work laptop, i was unable to open google analytics, after sometime, i figured out it was pihole blocking the site to load, disabled the blocking for 5mins to get work done – worth remembering, i was about to raise a ticket to the IT team 😂

Final Verdict – Not sure, how much of an impact this setup has really made, but the learnings about just how stuff works, is taking me back to school (loved it). after quite sometime, i was this deeply invested in making things work! This sub, youtube videos and my beloved chatgpt have been really helpful in making things work 🎉