Keeping it short, the main steps that you need to take, besides installing the Netgear Orbi, is to put together the Raspberry Pi (there are complete kits available for purchase), get a microSD card and install Raspbian (Buster Lite, the non-GUI variant) on it using a laptop and then insert it into the Pi 4 which, in turn will be connected to the Orbi main unit. I also wrote a quick guide some time ago on how to install Pi-Hole on a Pi 4, as well as its efficiency as an ad-blocker, so I won’t go through all the details again. That being said, Pi-Hole is very flexible and can be installed on a virtual machine, being compatible even with some Linux distros, but I decided to use the latest Raspberry Pi 4 (you are free to use the previous gen Pi 3 B+ and even the Pi Zero) and the installation process is a bit complicated, but, if you follow most guide on the web, you should easily get it done in no time. Considering that you can’t whitelist specific websites, but the ad domain, using Pi-Hole, you can only block / unblock a category of ads, so it will show or be blocked for all websites the browser-based ad-blockers do allow for the individual website ad white-listing, but, considering that Google wants to take the ad blocking from your hands and decide for you which ads will pass-through and which will be blocked (which, in a sense, seems fair if it didn’t come from the Search Engine Giant), the extension-type ad-blockers may become a lot less effective on Chromium browsers (Google Chrome and soon, Microsoft Edge). When compared to the browser-based ad-block extensions, Pi-Hole blocks the ads before they’re even downloaded to your devices, therefore improving both the loading time and the page size, but it does leave behind some blank spaces where the ads are supposed to be. This is the third system that I have connected to the Pi-Hole and, while the AmpliFi HD GE has played nice, so far, it seems that the Google WiFi has proven to be the most reluctant (and somehow, I’m not really surprised about it). It’s worth noting that the Netgear Orbi has underwent some major ‘structural’ changes, going from the initial hub-and-spoke approach to fully embracing the inter-node communication and this has caused it to become unstable for a surprisingly long amount of time, but in the end, Netgear seems to have yet again managed to stabilize the tri-band WiFi system, so this shouldn’t interfere in any way with the third-party ad-blocker. Unlike some of its peers, the Netgear Orbi has offered a lot more features and a better control for its users, especially through the web-based interface (one element that seems to be at the risk of extinction), so I decided to try and run the Netgear Orbi system along with Pi-Hole which was installed on a Raspberry Pi 4. The WiFi mesh systems have brought simplicity in the home network management and minimalism in design, but, while this is a blessing for most users, it can become a major source of annoyance when trying to run some advanced applications or more complex network configurations.
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