Blokada for Android adds several seconds page loading time, due to Secure DNS feature

Support
, ,
1

Hello,

the problem I have is annoying me since many months now! That’s why I’ve registered here for help…

It is kinda similiar to this one, but the “solution” does not work for me:

my exact problem description:
when opening a new website, the loading bar is stuck right after beginning to load the website, for at least 3 seconds - sometimes more. I think around 10 seconds is max.
this happens especially when I am not at home. means, when I am using mobile data (LTE).

I have a Samsung Galaxy S10 SM-G973F/DS, Android 11, stock ROM (Deutsche Telekom version), latest available update (Security Patch Level 1. March 2021).

As far as I can remember, this problem came with Blokada V5. I tried a downgrade to V4, which fixed this specific V5 problem, but came with a new one: after some days without reboot, some apps (even exempted) were unable to connect to the Internet (e.g. Playstore). even turning off Blokada didn’t fix that - only a reboot of my mobile.

anyway, back to the V5 Problem:
I got the APK from here, and at least one update from Samsung Appstore.
The one I got installed now was downloaded by Blokada itself.
Currently it is v5.12.0 (android 30 full release arm64-v8a).

I know it has something to do with Secure DNS, because it happens also with no active filter list.

I tried all these options in every constellation I could think of:

Blokada Settings (global and/or per network)
-secure DNS on/off
-different DNS, including some which don’t support secure DNS at all
-prefer network DNS on/off

Chrome security settings (currently Chrome v90.0.4430.210):
-use secure DNS on/off
-use current DNS
-use specific DNS

sometimes it seemed to be fixed and I thought YES! but just a bit later the problem was back.
this bugs me since quite some months now.

the only 100% “solution” for this problem I found, is turning Blokada off completely. :frowning:

I hope someone got a solution for this issue!

1 Like
2

additional info:
I did some tests with my clock today, to measure how long it takes, to load pages with Blokada on.

settings:
Blokada global
secure DNS off
DNS: cloudflare

Chrome:
secure DNS off

the measured time was FAR beyond what I would have guessed.
I did like 10 tests and none were faster than around 18 seconds.
slowest was about 25 seconds.

with Blokada off around 2-3 seconds.

all tests where on the same position, so no big change in LTE reception for sure.

conclusion:
Blokada adds between 15 and 23 seconds to load any new pages. :frowning: :frowning: :frowning:

3

Maybe it was the site you tested on. Blokada scans every possible thing that could be an ad, so it would make sense that it would take a long time. This is likely what blokada has to do every time you load a site: Scan the whole page for ads, determine which are ads, and block them from loading. In that process, blokada is doing more work stopping ads than the browser is doing loading the page. Blocking them from loading is probably the longest part, though, considering that the page will likely not stop trying to load the ads until blokada force-blocks them. If you look in the blokada app, the ad tries to load in some cases more than 100 times before the red shild appears. Earlier yesterday, a website was loading very slowly. After it finally loaded, about 15x slower than normal (normally it takes around 5 seconds, and it took about a minute), I checked blokada. The ad tried to load itself more than 800 times before giving up. Ads trying to load more than 100 times + not having the best phone out there = noticably extra loading time.

1 Like
4

This topic was automatically closed 7 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.