AB-Solution - The Ad Blocking Solution

[thelonelycoder]

please do.
just as ab-solution and pixlserv-tls give me sovereignty from ads and tracking, so too, does bitcoin (and cryptocurrency) from the financial gatekeepers.

You may now donate with Pay Pal or Bitcoin.
https://www.ab-solution.info/donate.html

 

[Protik]

I'm as anxious as you are but I take my time with it. No need for rushing anything, AB 3.9.x is stable and practically error free.

I file that under things you only notice when made aware of. A frequency illusion, also known as Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.

I would be happy to be a beta tester if you need any.

 

[thelonelycoder]

I would be happy to be a beta tester if you need any.

Not before the year 2000 turns 18.

 

[ewokuk]

Hi,

New to ab-solution and pixelserve, only discovered I could do this on my AC68U a couple of hours ago when I spotted it on here while looking for something else. I have installed both ab-solution and pixelserv ok, router check shows everything green, and ads are apparently being blocked nicely in my brief testing (I usually use Adblock in Chrome but have turned this off to test). I chose the 4th option for the ad blocking, adsbegone.

The only problem I seem to have is that I installed pixelserv via ab-solution and as far as I can tell it should replace the massive blank ad banner space with a 1x1 pixel gif so that the bit empty space gets closed up. It is not doing this at all and the pages look identical to how they looked before I installed pixelserv. I got no errors or warnins suggesting pixelserv was not working properly and http://192.168.1.2/servstats is showing uptime of 15 mins and a bunch of get requests which go up whenever I refresh a page that I know has ads on it (I am using www.techradar.com and http://planetdestiny.com for testing). Any ideas what I might have done wrong, or have I misunderstood how something works? Maybe I need to turn something on to get it to work? I am just browsing as normal on my pc via chrome.

Lastly, with 400k+ ad hosts being blocked, does this not have an adverse effect on browsing in terms of responsiveness? I am assuming every time a dns request is made, it has to check every line in the list to make sure it is not a blocked one and this has to cause some delay? Unless it does not work like that. I had similar concerns when adding large ad-blocking hosts files to windows. Just want to check.

 

[thelonelycoder]

The only problem I seem to have is that I installed pixelserv via ab-solution and as far as I can tell it should replace the massive blank ad banner space with a 1x1 pixel gif so that the bit empty space gets closed up. It is not doing this at all and the pages look identical to how they looked before I installed pixelserv. I got no errors or warnins suggesting pixelserv was not working properly and http://192.168.1.2/servstats is showing uptime of 15 mins and a bunch of get requests which go up whenever I refresh a page that I know has ads on it (I am using www.techradar.com and http://planetdestiny.com for testing). Any ideas what I might have done wrong, or have I misunderstood how something works? Maybe I need to turn something on to get it to work? I am just browsing as normal on my pc via chrome.

Pixelserv-tls only replaces images with a 1x1px image. And it does so if the ad is an image.
Content loaded through Javascript can not be replaced by a image and collapse the space it normally occupies.
Especially not if the container displaying the ad has a fixed size. And this is why you still see the empty area.
If you see (practically) no ads then AB-Solution and pixelserv-tls do a fine job for you.

Lastly, with 400k+ ad hosts being blocked, does this not have an adverse effect on browsing in terms of responsiveness? I am assuming every time a dns request is made, it has to check every line in the list to make sure it is not a blocked one and this has to cause some delay? Unless it does not work like that. I had similar concerns when adding large ad-blocking hosts files to windows. Just want to check.

The blocking file and the blacklist.txt are loaded into memory by Dnsmasq. Looking up the domains only takes milliseconds.
I bet that with ad blocking disabled, your browser loading time will increase as it has to download the content and render it.
Trust me, ad blocking with AB-Solution works very well, despite the routers limited RAM and processing capabilities.

 

[ewokuk]

Ok thanks, that probably explains it, almost all of the ads I am testing on seem to be server side scripting or javascript, but turning Adblock back on in chrome closes these gaps up.

I have a vpn set up on the router with certain local ip's routed through it and was expecting it not to work for those but it seems to be blocking even on the ip's being routed via the vpn.

I usually use a vpn in windows (since for my main pc the router is too slow to provide the full 220mb speed over vpn) and this obviously then uses the vpn provider DNS which bypasses the router setup and results in still showing the ads (unless I turn Adblock back on). I wonder if I could get this to use the router dns so I keep my max speed. Although the router wan dns is going to be my isp and not the vpn provider so thats not so desirable

 

[thelonelycoder]

Ok thanks, that probably explains it, almost all of the ads I am testing on seem to be server side scripting or javascript, but turning Adblock back on in chrome closes these gaps up.

I have a vpn set up on the router with certain local ip's routed through it and was expecting it not to work for those but it seems to be blocking even on the ip's being routed via the vpn.

I usually use a vpn in windows (since for my main pc the router is too slow to provide the full 220mb speed over vpn) and this obviously then uses the vpn provider DNS which bypasses the router setup and results in still showing the ads (unless I turn Adblock back on). I wonder if I could get this to use the router dns so I keep my max speed. Although the router wan dns is going to be my isp and not the vpn provider so thats not so desirable

Again, the router's limited recources come into effect even more with a VPN.
Having a VPN resolve DNS through your router between your Windows PC and provider sounds like hijacking to me.
I doubt this is doable, and certainly is much less safe.

 

[ewokuk]

Again, the router's limited recources come into effect even more with a VPN.
Having a VPN resolve DNS through your router between your Windows PC and provider sounds like hijacking to me.
I doubt this is doable, and certainly is much less safe.

Hmm but the router is normally acting as the dns server isnt it? on a normal connection the windows machine connects to the router and the router handles wan connectivity and the dns servers. The only difference when connected to a vpn client in windows is that it specifies its own dns server instead of just using the router like it normally would? So all I need to do is have windows use the router like it would on any normal connection instead of the one specified by the vpn client. Likely I am not understanding how it all works but that was my basic understanding of it

 

[thelonelycoder]

Hmm but the router is normally acting as the dns server isnt it? on a normal connection the windows machine connects to the router and the router handles wan connectivity and the dns servers. The only difference when connected to a vpn client in windows is that it specifies its own dns server instead of just using the router like it normally would? So all I need to do is have windows use the router like it would on any normal connection instead of the one specified by the vpn client. Likely I am not understanding how it all works but that was my basic understanding of it

If your windows pc is connected to a VPN server as a client, then all traffic goes through that tunnel.
Assuming your VPN provider is on the WAN side, then "breaking" the tunnel to use your router as DNS server is impossible. Or at least it should be.

 

[ewokuk]

Ok maybe not possible, I can always just modify my windows hosts file to get the same effect on the pc I expect.

I like this ab-solution, works well and even updates itself. The only way it could be any better is if it could be built into the gui and controlled from there

 

[iManuB]

The idea of having AB-Solution is to block ADS for all devices connected through our Router: TV - Smartphone - Computer - Tablet, etc...

Of course, you can lock it through the Windows host, but it's only limited to that operating system. If you have a dual boot? In the second operating system, for example, Linux? You will also have to work there in the Host file. Obviously it would make the whole thing more uncomfortable and boring.

The Web GUI will not be ready before the New Year (2018). Yes, an interface would make AB-Solution even more a masterpiece.

Let things take their course

 

[skeal]

@thelonelycoder I just updated from 380.68_4 to the official 382.1 I did not do anything other than update my scripts before updating the router. Everything went great. No problems and no errors. All scripts running without reinstall. You are awesome!

 

[shooter40sw]

Hi, I have been using AB-Solution from its beginning and I like it a lot, I installed pixelserv but I dont think its working very well, I see the stats, and if I go to the virtual IP it has http it goes blank, think its whats supposed to do, but if I go to https ://myip
In chrome

This site can’t provide a secure connection

192.168.1.3 uses an unsupported protocol.
ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH
HIDE DETAILS
Unsupported protocol
The client and server don't support a common SSL protocol version or cipher suite.

And EDGE says outdated TLS so it does not serve the pixel, so I suppose this is not normal

I can see in the router logs that it does create missing certs, but I think the pixelserv is not working as intended.
any ideas?
Thanks

 

[Twiglets]

Hi, I have been using AB-Solution from its beginning and I like it a lot, I installed pixelserv but I dont think its working very well, I see the stats, and if I go to the virtual IP it has http it goes blank, think its whats supposed to do, but if I go to https ://myip
In chrome

This site can’t provide a secure connection

192.168.1.3 uses an unsupported protocol.
ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH
HIDE DETAILS
Unsupported protocol
The client and server don't support a common SSL protocol version or cipher suite.

And EDGE says outdated TLS so it does not serve the pixel, so I suppose this is not normal

I can see in the router logs that it does create missing certs, but I think the pixelserv is not working as intended.
any ideas?
Thanks

The clue is in the 'ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH' message.

Please follow the instructions below for Latest Chrome (Windows version), other versions should be similar:

1. Open Google Chrome
2. Click Alt F and select Settings
3. Scroll down (bottom of screen) and select Advanced ...
4. Scroll down to the System section and click on Open proxy settings...
5. Select the Advanced tab
6. Scroll down to Security category
7. Select SSL 3.0 & TLS 1.2
8. Click 'OK' Button
9. Try accessing https://myip again
   
10. Report what happens .....

 

[shooter40sw]

Thanks for your response, Its giving me the same error, trying with EDGE now

Can’t connect securely to this page
This might be because the site uses outdated or unsafe TLS security settings. If this keeps happening, try contacting the website’s owner.
Try this:

Im on Windows 10, fully updated, I restored the advanced settings, by default it disables SSL 3, I enabled it, It already had the al TLS checked

The clue is in the 'ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH' message.

Please follow the instructions below for Latest Chrome (Windows version), other versions should be similar:

1. Open Google Chrome
2. Click Alt F and select Settings
3. Scroll down (bottom of screen) and select Advanced ...
4. Scroll down to the System section and click on Open proxy settings...
5. Select the Advanced tab
6. Scroll down to Security category
7. Select SSL 3.0 & TLS 1.2
8. Click 'OK' Button
9. Try accessing https://myip again
   
10. Report what happens .....

 

[Twiglets]

Just realised that I am using 'http://myip/servstats' ..... (note the missing 's').
http works https does not in both Firefox and Chrome.
Please try http.

 

[shooter40sw]

Just realised that I am using 'http://myip/servstats' ..... (note the missing 's').
http works https does not in both Firefox and Chrome.
Please try http.

Yes http does work, no issues, but https://myip shouldn't show a blank web page instead of the error?

 

[nomore4u]

With pixelserv-tls [192.168.1.2] enabled, the android Amazon app (i.e. the shopping app) does not work. I get pages that say "UH-OH Something went wrong on our end." When pixelserv is disabled (off), the android Amazon app works correctly.

I have the latest pixelserv-tls.add version, 3.9.2.2.

Any suggestions?

 

[thelonelycoder]

Yes http does work, no issues, but https://myip shouldn't show a blank web page instead of the error?

Pixelserv does not serve the stats on https, never has.

 

[shooter40sw]

Pixelserv does not serve the stats on https, never has.

I understand that, I didt not express myself correctly.
If I go the http://192.168.1.2 it will show me a blank web page, shouldn't it do the same with https://192.168.1.2 ?