Ad blocking

Network-wide ad blocking may be desired for content filtering to reduce ads, reduce bandwidth usage, reduce tracking and increase privacy. This can be accomplished with OpenWrt by installing one of the options below:

1. Adblock: install packages adblock + luci-app-adblock. The latest Adblock documentation is found here: README or via the forum thread.
2. Simple-Adblock: install packages simple-adblock + luci-app-simple-adblock. The latest Simple Adblock documentation is found here: README or via the forum thread.
3. AdGuard Home: install package adguardhome. The intitial setup is more complex and not managed through LuCI, so if you choose this read the documentation carefully.
4. Banhostlist: install package banhostlist. However, this project has not been updated since 2015.

This forum post (from 2017) gives a short comparison between Adblock and Simple Adblock. Summarized, it says that Adblock is more powerful and might receive additional features in the future while Simple Adblock aims to be easier to use and more performant.

These can be installed on the LuCI web interface, or via terminal with SSH. The example below is for Adblock.
Once installed, Adblock can be configured via Services → Adblock. Simple-Adblock can be configured via Services → Simple-Adblock.

# Install packages
opkg update
opkg install adblock
 
# Provide web interface
opkg install luci-app-adblock
 
# Backup the blocklists
uci set adblock.global.adb_backupdir="/etc/adblock"
 
# Save and apply
uci commit adblock
/etc/init.d/adblock restart