Set up your own ad-blocking + VPN server!
The story
I just got an email recently about my upcoming VPN subscription renewal. Being that I wasn't ecstatic with my previous year of service, I was on the lookout for an alternative.
While researching, I had remembered that I've been wanting to set up and configure a Pi-hole for my local network! Then I realized... would a Pi-hole on my local network even be effective if all my traffic were directed to a single destination (my VPN service provider)? ChatGPT provided some good insight here ;)
I wasn't encouraged by ChatGPT's response, but after continued research I found this great tutorial by Scaleway on how to configure both a Pihole and PiVPN on the same server. Configuring them both on the same server allows me to tunnel my traffic through the PiVPN, and configure PiVPN to leverage Pi-hole's DNS resolution.
In my opinion, some of the primary benefits for setting up your own ad-blocking + VPN server are:
- granular control over which hostnames to block/allow
- greater control of your network traffic data (obfuscated from your local network and ISP)
- automation to teardown & setup a new server (~30min)
Install
To setup & configure your own ad-blocking + VPN server, check my repo for the most up-to-date instructions: https://github.com/thomasvn/pihole-pivpn
Happy hacking!