When you're browsing the web at home, numerous websites track your digital activity with online trackers, display ads that consume your precious bandwidth and screen space, and occasionally lead you to phishing or malware sites. While you could install an ad blocker and/or antivirus software on all your devices, you would need to continually keep them updated.

While on-device ad blockers and antivirus software are still useful for an extra layer of protection, an alternative solution lies within the Domain Name System (DNS). Nearly every attempt to access a network host involves domain names that need translating into IP addresses. You're likely using a DNS server operated by your Internet service provider or Google. However, by setting up your own DNS server at home, you gain full control over this translation from domain names to IP addresses. With the appropriate filters on your own DNS server, you can block access to unwanted or malicious websites without needing to install or configure any client-side software on your devices.

AdGuard Home [1] open source software lets you do just that. After installing AdGuard Home on a Raspberry Pi, another Linux server, or even on a compatible router, all you need to do is configure your DHCP server to direct all DHCP clients to use AdGuard Home's IP address as their required DNS server. AdGuard Home has a web interface to manage blocklists, view logs of DNS queries, set client-specific rules, and more. In this article, I'll demonstrate how to set up AdGuard Home to protect devices on your local network.

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