My ISP has given me free Netflix with Ads.

Anyone know if it is possible to block the ads at a DNS level?

I know it is possible for Channel 4 and a few other streaming services.

#AdBlock #Netflix

Virgin have also upgraded me to Gigabit fibre.

Which, as I wrote a few years ago, is mostly pointless.

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/12/whats-the-point-in-gigabit-broadband/

I wonder when gigabit will actually be useful?

@Edent In combination with a public IP (dynamic or not), gigabit fiber is very nice for hosting stuff at home, especially filesync things and stream from home. You can even host your own Peertube or Owncast instance easily.

@Edent have you seen any difference in video call apps like google meet, zoom, discord, or streaming *upload* like twitch?

streaming download is fine for me on a ~60mbps connection but the fidelity of the above apps is often awful and I'm wondering if fibre would fix it

@Edent do you have a pi-hole set up? that might cover it

@GroupNebula563 that's what I'm asking. Does Pi-Hole cover it?

@Edent I don't want to jinx things, but our Netflix with ads account has never shown us any ads ever.

I think it's probably a mismatch between geo-IP for the Isle of Man and their ad server, but I don't want them to fix it. 😆

@Edent Damn. Now all you nerds are gonna move your VPN endpoints to the Isle of Man and alert Netflix to this feature, aren't you? 🤪

@isleofmandan I'll look into moving 😆

@Edent it might, i'm not sure. if you look at the logs of the pi-hole you might be able to see what domains it's making requests to when it shows ads

Anyway, if you want stupid fast Internet, sign up using this link and Virgin will both give us £50.

http://aklam.io/rOTKz1

@neil @Edent
I'm stuck on VDSL at around 70 down. Allegedly FTTP is coming within 12 months but for the sake of a minute or two I'm not sure it will truly make sense. Shiny though.

@Edent Gigabit fiber's utility is mostly in "re-selling" the network, for example if you host things at home for multiple internet users.

The static IP problem can be solved with a VPS that reverse proxies traffic to your house through a VPN connection.

@neil @Edent
Grimacing at my current 3.4:0.6 ☹️

@Edent

Keep at 350Mbps for a tenner more (£55) Rise to 500Mbps for a fiver more (£49)

… 500Mbps was cheaper than 350Mbps? That doesn’t make any sense.

Anyway, if it’s symmetric then gigabit is definitely useful for self-hosting.

@noisytoot as I say, it is a price anchor.
https://www.shopify.com/enterprise/blog/44331971-6-scientific-principles-of-persuasion-all-smart-ecommerce-founders-know#

@neil @Edent every now and again when trying to play games with friends online we will get blocked by a huge update that either was just out or didn't do an automatic download overnight. 1000Mbps would be much better than 500, but realistically the friend with only 250 is still going to hold us all back from playing together so still not going to gain me much...

@neil @Edent
I just upgraded to 1g at the router and get 700-800 at the device. It’s a difference for sure.

@Edent
You could try Pi-Hole and see how far it gets you.

@yala does it work for you?

@noisytoot @Edent wow after two contract terms of price hikes I was paying £75 for 500Mbps 😐 suffice so say, once the CityFibre went in I couldn’t be rid of Virgin fast enough.

@Edent seeing same here. 300->500 got me from 250 to 310. No, I don't want to pay more for gigabit unitl i can get it thanks.

@neil @Edent main reason for me wanting to go above 500Mb down is to get faster upload as the upload is tiny in comparison. Anyone if I lived a few miles up the road I'd get CityFibre and symmetric speeds. Some day Open reach will support symmetric speeds, as the lack of upload is often the bottleneck.

Using iperf, I can get a max of about 940Mbps between machines on my LAN.
I suspect that might be a limit of my router, USB-C Ethernet Hubs, and ancient cabling.

Most Internet speed tests simply can't handle gigabit connections.

Cloudflare's gets to about 900Mbps which I suspect is about as is good as possible.

But the reality is almost no service on the Internet can support gigabit home connections.

@Edent I think 940mbps is good. Iperf is measuring the data layer bandwidth not the ethernet bandwidth at the frame level.

@Edent no, sadly not by DNS

@jan_j @Edent ooh, I’ll have to look up the channel 4 ad blocker!

@Edent We've found it useful when pushing data around. Useful with large work files uploading/syncing with the likes of O365. For @ministraitor uploading video files. We have ethernet for this, and wifi for general stuff.

"'ullo John, gotta new router?"

Upgraded my Virgin Media to the newer Hub 5 (turns out the 5x doesn't have modem mode).

I can now get the full 1,130Mbps I'm paying for.

But, still, even though I have Cat6 cables most of my hubs, switches, and ports are only gigabit enabled. Domestic equipment simply can't use anything faster.

WiFi in a congested radio environment isn't going to get close.

Even if it could, most servers can't deliver that quickly.

@Edent ah, interesting - was the Hub 5 something you had to request from Virgin, or did you just get one elsewhere and set it up? (As per recent discussion was issued with a 5x, with its lack Modem Mode.)

(I'm aware that this is very much in the class of problems like "my champagne glass is too small".)

@yvan I already had the Hub 4. I went onto their online chat and whinged about poor download speeds until they sent me a new Hub.

If you're on the XPON network, I don't think you have a choice though.

@Edent ah yeah, just been trying to do some research, but it's all a bit muddy... I'm FTTP/XGS-PON so I think just stuck with the 5x... not an insurmountable problem, just a little annoying. (But compared to unreliable <40mpbs BT rotting fenland copper that cost me more than Virgin... I'm not really complaining.)

@Edent
Single service, no. But a house full of techies doing different things simultaneously can push it to those limits.

@iMeddles
Can it though?
A dozen people torrenting Linux ISOs all day might get close. But is that really likely?

@Edent
We never got to a gigabit (because it wasn't offered then) but in a previous house share 500Mbps was not enough, and occasionally caused issues (and that's aside from the time one of my housemates self-hosted projects got slashdot'd, and we were intermittently offline for three days)

@Edent the price of 2.5Gb ethernet has gone down. I've found it's good for faster and more reliable local backups to the NAS. Yes it does use the extra bandwidth, I've checked.

@smsm1 which extremely cheap 2.5Gbps switch do you recommend? Ideally USB powered.

@Edent I'm using the TP-Link TL-SG105S-M2 (5 port) and a similar numbered 8port version.
https://www.tp-link.com/us/business-networking/soho-switch-unmanaged/tl-sg105s-m2/

https://thepihut.com/products/usb-3-2-to-2-5g-ethernet-converter is the usb adapter I've been using on the computer side. Synology NAS has 10Gb card plus the above linked together to spread load.

I've not had issues with them. This is the only equipment I've personal experience of so far as it's my first step into 2.5Gb networking.

@smsm1 that's about 4x as expensive as a gigabit switch. And I'm rarely moving terabytes of data around my LAN.
I'll stick it on the Xmas wishlist 😄

@Edent I haven't looked at USB powered switches.

Can you spot the moment when I removed the 6㏈ attenuator from my cable?

@Edent
Waves from the countryside - was 2mb pipe when we moved here - now we get a passable 40mb. Neighbours up the road had galvanised telephone wire - which is fine for telephones...

@Edent 🤔