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

Yes! I have 500:500, and while I like the idea of 1G/1G, in practice, it would make absolutely no noticeable difference to me whatsoever.

@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?

@madaeas @Edent I don't do anything where I'd even notice the extra, as we are no where close to hitting 500 either way today!

@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.

@smsm1 @Edent

> Some day Open reach will support symmetric speeds

AIUI, OR does, but BTW does not - once that won't eat into their Ethernet sales, I expect?

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!