UniFi Ad Blocking - Does it work?

Affiliate Links (I earn a small percentage of the sale if you use these links):

Contact us for network consulting and best practices deployment today! We support all Grandstream, DrayTek, Obihai, Poly, Ubiquiti, MikroTik, Extreme, Palo Alto, and more!

Come back for the next video!
Twitter - @WillieHowe
TikTok - @whowe82

SUBSCRIBE! THUMBS-UP! Comment and Share!

[CPurdiePlays]

I think it's a good start. Hopefully Ubiquiti adds a way to tweak what is blocked and what isn't.

[kelemvor]

How does it compare to your pi hole? I'm assuming the pie hole does a better job since it's been around for much longer?

[nikfam]

I own a UDM and as soon as the firmware allowed ad blocking I activated the feature. Initial test was similar ~78%. However an update of the network app completely killed ad block capability (currently 5%). Does it still work for you?

[blajorst]

I can’t even turn the option on. I’m using udr running os version 3.0.13. I get ‘an error has occurred when applying changes to traffic identification settings. This action could not be completed’

[resolutepixel]

It's about time!

I was playing with ad blocking through JSON files way back when I had my USG3 about 4 years ago before I discovered pihole

I almost wish they would have implemented it once it was a more finished product, but it's a good start

[donaldhoudek]

What I would like to see on the UniFi DNS blocker, AdGuard or the others, is that they make a downloadable file and or a table available to the end user of the contents of the BLOCKED/ALLOWED URL's that they are using. The user could then run a canned program (or maybe UniFi could) that would create a master file that the DNS program could use for blocking/allowing sites, eliminating duplicates. As it stands now, like AdGuard you can add additional DNS tables to the AdGuard program, BUT I would guarantee that each of the individual "Blocking" lists from available from the different list providers contains many of the same URL's to block/allow, which adds to the search time. I had 3 lists added to AdGuard, but the processing time was aggravating to the other half, especially on the iPhone. Just another thought.

[WhoIsThis]

I think this would be great for a network primarily of mobile clients (tablets/cell phones) where ad blocks are non-existent. However, without the ability to override false positives or even legitimate ads, as browser based blockers offer, I feel this option is not as versatile, at least in my use cases.

[JasonsLabVideos]

Blocking ad's is a good thing !! Good video Willie !!

[giggadan]

I run pi-hole at home and I enjoy it but the family always complains about google ads for buying stuff getting blocked sadly. For me personally I wouldn’t deploy pi-hole or this iteration of unifi as blocking as it would result in a lot of phone calls from clients.

[ChickenPermissionOG]

Trying to figure out how to let certain domains bypass the ad blocking.

[donaldhoudek]

GREAT Video!! It would be nice if you could click on the red bar and unblock it and add it to a local "OK" list, and the option click on the green bar and say add to a local block list. A local block and not to block list would be a great way to go to supplement this service. Of course Google or Yahoo... will probably never be blocked.

[BrewedIt]

It's crap. Also because it's network layer not client blocking like browser extension. I did mixed testing between Brave, Firefox and browser extensions vs pi-hole and adguardhome vs unifi method. Even the content filter from unifi is crap, its leverages off CleanBrowsing DNS filter. It's also doesn't block a strong selection of crap vs say Nextdns or using firebog lists with adguard or pi-hole etc. Ubiquiti came a bit late to the party anyway for both ad blocking and content filtering mentioned.

[gregtourte]

On that d3ward tool, if you click on the red (or green) labels, it expands showing the list of domains in that category highlighting which ones are or are not blocked. When in your case, googleads appear red, it means that there are unblocked domains in that category.

[maximosm]

How can we have this AD indicator mark at google search?

[jasonluong]

What's the point in blocking the websites that clicking on the ads will go to? The whole point of an ad-blocker is to prevent people from seeing the ads in the first place.

[Rymden]

Thanks for the video. Untill this comes out for me. Where do I put the IP adress of my Raspberry Pi's PiHole into Dream Machine Pro?

[HellSpawn]

Hi,
With activate ad-block, are Websites loading faster?
Cause Thais is what i would expect from this feature

[nordemoniac]

Do you need to restart anything to make it work? So far it doesn't seem to do anything on my UDM SE. Only 26% blocked on that tool you linked to.

[WAGISDev]

This functionality doesn't work w/ a CloudKey Gen2 and UXG-Pro

[kevinhughes]

Good stuff can u do vid on new vpn client feature to please? I haven’t bothered with the ad blocking as like u run Pi-hole