Hi all,
Very much a newbie when it comes to these things (please be gentle), but I have a question and after scouring reddit posts and the wider internet have been unable to find a clear, crisp, concise answer. I posted this same question at r/eero but hopefully people here could also help?
Context: I’ve got a couple of Eeros at home and recently finished a trial of Eero Secure. Whilst I did benefit from some ad-blocking at a network level, it didn’t quite catch them all and I’m reaching a point of deciding whether to pay an annual fee for the Eero subscription or use that same money to susbsidise a purchase of a raspberry pi and tinker with pi-hole instead.
Setup: My modem feeds the Eero in Gateway mode which, in addition to generating Wifi also feeds a network switch connected to the Smart TV and NAS.
Dilemma: I have no real experience with Pi-hole / Raspberry Pi and would approach this as a project. Additionally:- I have a Synology NAS which I use as a Media Server and sometimes access from outside of my network (when travel was a common thing eh!).
- I also use the NAS to VPN into my network when I’m outside (OpenVPN installed in a Docker container)
Questions:1- Is Pi-Hole’s ad-blocking capability (I understand it also tells you which devices are calling home etc.) substantially better than Eero Secure’s capabilities?2- Would it be worth going through the hassle of setting up a Raspberry Pi + Pi Hole?3- Are there any quirks when it comes to a Raspberry Pi + remote access from outside of my network? Would it act up if I wanted to stream content from a Plex server?
Any input appreciated. Just wondering if I’m better off not embarking on this massive quest!
Thanks.
L
EDIT: Thanks everyone for your answers! Very much appreciated, and I’ll be tinkering with PiHole very soon 
You test it in a docker container on your Synology. No need to purchase a Raspberry Pi.
As someone who recently set up PiHole + Eero, I can say that I did not sign up for Eero Secure after the trial expired. I am perfectly happy with my PiHole setup, and haven’t noticed any drop in ad blocking without Eero Secure. That being said, it’s pretty easy to just reactivate Eero Secure if you decide to go back.
My next step to setup is a Plex server, so I can’t really speak to that personally. I know of people who have set them up successfully with PiHole, so it definitely seems doable, but I don’t know how involved setup is.
I don’t use a NAS, but I have a VPN operated by a second RPi, and I’ve been able to use it without issue.
Hope that helps!
1- Is Pi-Hole’s ad-blocking capability (I understand it also tells you which devices are calling home etc.) substantially better than Eero Secure’s capabilities?
I too have an Eero+Synology setup, and I also tried out Eero secure. I find the pihole experience much more flexible, if a bit complicated. I still have the eero handling DHCP, as I believe (correct me if I’m wrong), giving pihole DHCP ownership turns eero into essentially bridge mode.
2- Would it be worth going through the hassle of setting up a Raspberry Pi + Pi Hole?
If you have IPv6 in the home network, I’d say yes. I know just enough to be dangerous, and I can’t find a good how-to to set up IPv6 with Docker on Synology. This is especially important if you have Apple mobile devices, as they default to IPv6 if they can.
I’m also using unbound on the Raspberry Pi.
I do still run pihole in a container (using Portainer) on the Synology, but it’s my second IPv4 DNS server.
3- Are there any quirks when it comes to a Raspberry Pi + remote access from outside of my network? Would it act up if I wanted to stream content from a Plex server?
We must be twins. I have Plex Media Server running on Synology too. Haven’t had an issue with streaming content from it.
I have a couple of eero’s, pihole running on a raspberry pi, and a QNAP NAS running a PLEX server. I don’t have any issues with my setup.
There are several posts on how to setup the raspberry pi with pihole and pivpn. One was posted the other day. https://blog.crankshafttech.com/2021/03/how-to-setup-pihole-pivpn-unbound.html You can skip the unbound part if you don’t want to run unbound.
I don’t run pihole on a docker just because of how long it takes for it to reboot after updates, which would bring your internet down until the docker is back up and running. I would buy a raspberry pi and follow the guide I posted above.
OpenVPN on your Synology should still work as it does now. I would move to piVPN to setup wireguard, but that’s just my opinion.
As for PLEX, open the remote access port that PLEX is using on the eero and all is good. You don’t need to do anything special with pihole.
To answer your questions:
- Pi-hole gives you the ability to choose what you want to have blocked and whitelist domains for sites that you find are not working correctly. That last time I checked eero secure uses a certain DNS that doesn’t give you this ability.
- I think it’s worth setting up the raspberry pi over having it setup on your Synology. I had it setup like this on my QNAP, but it would take a few minutes before the docker came back online if it needed to reboot. The raspberry pi reboots fairly quickly.
- If you are just wanting to access Plex remotely all you need to do is forward the remote access port on your eero to your Synology. Pi-hole has nothing to do with this.
Thanks everyone for your answers! Very much appreciated, and I’ll be tinkering with PiHole very soon
I believe (correct me if I’m wrong), giving pihole DHCP ownership turns eero into essentially bridge mode.
It does not. The router still routes and does NAT, but not DHCP (handing out IP’s to clients).
Internet search is your friend. You can learn all about Eero routers.
Echoing the response below, it’s a very popular wifi mesh router which was acquired by Amazon a couple of years ago. You can do a few nifty things with it, including subscribe to its paid plan which includes ad-blocking, which should hopefully explain the question…
The OP has a valid question, many people lack the domain knowledge to understand what they are reading when they look up a topic like PiHole. So asking a group like this can allow them to access kind-helpful people that may have direct experience with both Eero devices and PiHole or willing to take the time out of their days to look up Eero devices and help them understand what they do not understand.
If you do not want to be a productive participant in the conversation then do not comment. Lets other that are willing to help comment, it literally take no effort to not comment.
You were the one who asked the “what is an eero” question.
You should probably find a different forum where you can be non-helpful. Or, just don’t comment and move on to the next topic.
