Is it sensible to use dnscrypt-proxy as a sinkhole adblocker?

[gyzerok]

Hello everyone! I've been using your project for years now and love all the effort. Thank you!

Recently I figured I'd want to start using sinkhole approach for adblocking in my home network. I've discovered various projects to achieve this: PiHole, AdGuardHome and blocky. However I know that there is a blacklist feature in dnscrypt-proxy which seems like it could be used for the same purpose.

My question is: is it wise to use dnscrypt-proxy for that purpose? Maybe it's not designed to do it? Maybe performance will degrade too much if I use some huge 200k lines blacklists? Basically are there any significant trade-offs involved?

[jedisct1]

Yes, using dnscrypt-proxy for ad blocking (and other categories of content filtering such as malware, trackers, etc) is very common, and having 200k lines blacklist is fine.

In addition to exact matching, dnscrypt-proxy supports pattern matching, so very large lists are usually not necessary.

There's even a tool that can partially simplify lists for you, to avoid redundant rules: https://github.com/DNSCrypt/dnscrypt-proxy/tree/master/utils/generate-domains-blocklist

Also see:

• filters
• combining blocklists
• public blocklists

[gyzerok]

Great to hear, thank you!

Just a couple more questions if you don't mind:

1. Would it be ok to use such setup on an OpenWrt router performance-wise? It seems like other solutions are heavy on resources.
2. AdGuardHome can use dnscrypt-proxy. I just can't understand why people would use former in the first place if latter is enough to do the job. Is it just because of the UI?

[jedisct1]

1. Performance will be fine. But very large lists can take quite a bit of memory, so it mainly depends on how much memory the router has rather than its CPU.
2. Yes, a lot of people are not familiar with using a command line.

[gyzerok]

I see now. Appreciate your help!