Diversion vs AdGuardHome?

[Rob Q]

Hi,
I'm just looking for something simple to set up, easy to configure, and has the lightest footprint on the router's hardware so it doesn't slow anything down.
What is the difference between the two anyway?
All I've learned from an old post that AdGuardHome may have a memory leak.

For what it's worth, what I like about Diversion is that you just load amtm to install it, and forget about it.

 

[Phil Mcavity]

I would say Diversion is slightly lighter on the system than Adguard. Diversion is set and forget whereas Adguard has its own webui and is more customisable. Try them both and see what you like. Both are amazing at what they do , block ads and trackers.
BTW Adguard is also available via AMTM as well as Diversion. Good luck.

 

[Rob Q]

I find Diversion blocks ads on my Roku and sometimes it blocks the ads on my PC while I'm listening to Spotify. However, I find it also blocks too much as it will prevent me from loading the video streams on the CBC Roku app. I can't find the server it uses to put on the whitelist.

 

[JimbobJay]

In terms of running on the router itself, I would say Diversion. It's definitely much lighter on router resources than AGH, and like you say, with amtm it's very much an easy set-it and forget it process.

However, diversion has it's drawbacks. If you have Apple devices in the house, then dnsmasq, which Diversion relies upon, does not currently off a wildcard processing of Type 65 DNS queries. Diversion has employed an iptables workaround for this, which should theoretically work, but Apple has a broken way of processing these responses, and rather than dropping down to regular dns query, continues to wait for the Type 65 response, and so you end up with broken and hanging websites.

Disabling Type 65 blocking in Diversion stops broken websites, but then Apple devices which are really pushing Type 65 queries are able to get around Diversion's ad-blocking, so you'll start seeing ads seep through on Apple devices.

AdGuard Home and PiHole are currently able to handle Type 65 queries and still respond with a NULL response to them.

After years of using Diversion I switched to AGH running on a Raspberry Pi 4. Whilst it is a little more complicated to set-up and more resource heavy compared with diversion, I've been very happy with it overall, and the Pi 4 handles it nicely.

So I would say, if running on router, Diversion hands-down, but with ad-blocking caveats for Apple devices.
But if you have a Raspberry Pi and feel comfortable on the command line, then AGH or Pi-Hole running on that, with pi connected directly to router via ethernet.

 

[Ellenswamy]

In terms of running on the router itself, I would say Diversion. It's definitely much lighter on router resources than AGH, and like you say, with amtm it's very much an easy set-it and forget it process.

However, diversion has it's drawbacks. If you have Apple devices in the house, then dnsmasq, which Diversion relies upon, does not currently off a wildcard processing of Type 65 DNS queries. Diversion has employed an iptables workaround for this, which should theoretically work, but Apple has a broken way of processing these responses, and rather than dropping down to regular dns query, continues to wait for the Type 65 response, and so you end up with broken and hanging websites.

Disabling Type 65 blocking in Diversion stops broken websites, but then Apple devices which are really pushing Type 65 queries are able to get around Diversion's ad-blocking, so you'll start seeing ads seep through on Apple devices.

AdGuard Home and PiHole are currently able to handle Type 65 queries and still respond with a NULL response to them.

After years of using Diversion I switched to AGH running on a Raspberry Pi 4. Whilst it is a little more complicated to set-up and more resource heavy compared with diversion, I've been very happy with it overall, and the Pi 4 handles it nicely.

So I would say, if running on router, Diversion hands-down, but with ad-blocking caveats for Apple devices.
But if you have a Raspberry Pi and feel comfortable on the command line, then AGH or Pi-Hole running on that, with pi connected directly to router via ethernet.

I do this but with Pi-hole, tried it on the router but would rather keep it off the router so if it breaks I won't have to worry about the router part also