How to block ads?

Question

Ad blocking

At home, here is such a network:

Wireless are ordinary phones and tablets
Wired is one stationary computer and a laptop (important).
The laptop has Linux Mint 19.1 installed.
Is there a way to configure it to block ads, so that in fact it was a gateway for all devices and cut ads, and for it the router itself was already the gateway?
The laptop is connected to the router via a gigabit twisted pair cable.

Answer 1

The problem is that many connections go over HTTPS, which is not a trivial task to intercept. Therefore, in fact, there are only two main ways:
1) Installing a blocker on each device. Thankfully you don't have many. By the way, not everyone is annoyed by ads, so you can install a blocker for yourself, and for others if you wish. With a laptop and a computer, obviously - uBlock Origin . With tablets, decide for yourself. Paid AdGuard Pro performs well on iOS (removes ads in all applications).
2) Ad filtering at the DNS level.The router itself must have DNS. In theory, you have it and DHCP part-time, so it's not a problem to specify yourself as a DNS server when distributing settings to each device. A good solution, in my opinion, is paid SkyDNS . But you can also independently make (download and then edit yourself) a hosts file, which would list everything advertising. The disadvantage of the hosts file is that you cannot set a mask, so for maximum flexibility you will need a smarter solution - smart dns or firewall. I don’t know what is more convenient for you and what you understand (and how much extra money you have).

Answer 2

You can put pi-hole or adguard home on the laptop, and register its ip on the router as a dns server.