---
license: mit
library_name: onnx
tags:
- ad-blocking
- cybersecurity
- domain-classification
- dns-filtering
- edge-inference
- on-device
- esp8266
- nodemcu
- logistic-regression
language:
- en
metrics:
- accuracy
- precision
- recall
- f1
- roc_auc
model-index:
- name: AdVig
  results:
  - task:
      type: text-classification
      name: Domain Classification
    dataset:
      name: AdTrap v1 (test split)
      type: saidutta69/AdTrap
    metrics:
    - type: accuracy
      value: 0.9485
      name: Accuracy
    - type: precision
      value: 0.8491
      name: Precision
    - type: recall
      value: 0.7307
      name: Recall
    - type: f1
      value: 0.7854
      name: F1
    - type: roc_auc
      value: 0.9478
      name: ROC AUC
---

# AdVig

![RACER IS OP](https://res.cloudinary.com/cmazqjs6/image/upload/racer_is_op_banner_branded_pu7zud.png)

> Block ads and trackers at the DNS layer before they load - **16 KB of int8 weights running on a NodeMCU**. No cloud, no runtime lists, no API calls. The offline, no-dependency Pi-hole, distilled into a single dot product.

Priorities: **Quality > Size > Speed**

**Trained on:** AdTrap v1 - 713,539 domains (93,541 ad/tracker + 619,998 legitimate), built from StevenBlack/hosts, AdAway, Yoyo, and Majestic Million.

Sibling of [saidutta69/PhishScout](https://huggingface.co/saidutta69/PhishScout).

---

## Model Overview

AdVig is a tiny hybrid logistic regression that classifies any bare domain as `BLOCK` (ad/tracker) or `ALLOW` (legitimate) using the **domain string alone** - the exact input a DNS query carries. No page content, no network calls at inference time. Score = one int32 dot product over hashed character n-grams plus 34 structural features.

| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Architecture | Logistic regression: hashed char n-grams + structural features |
| Features | 16,384 hashed n-gram buckets (FNV-1a, sign trick) + 34 structural |
| Input | Bare domain string (DNS query hostname) |
| Model size | **64.4 KB** float32 ONNX / **16.0 KB** int8 quantized |
| Training time | ~18 s CPU |
| Inference | **933 us/domain measured on NodeMCU @160 MHz**; ~113 us reference Python |
| License | MIT |

## Performance

Final model (test split, held out, group-disjoint by registrable domain, seed 42):

| Metric | float32 | int8 quantized |
|---|---|---|
| Accuracy | 0.9485 | 0.9486 |
| Precision | 0.8491 | 0.8597* |
| Recall | 0.7307 | 0.7069* |
| F1 | **0.7854** | **0.7862** |
| ROC AUC | **0.9478** | 0.9477 |
| False positive rate | 1.87% | 1.87% |

*int8 row evaluated at its own val-tuned threshold; quantization changed F1 by +0.0007 (hash-collision regularization).

### Why not bigger? (bucket sweep)

Smaller hashing spaces beat larger ones - collisions regularize:

| buckets | C | F1 | AUC | int8 size |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2^16 | 10 | 0.7271 | 0.9288 | 64 KB |
| 2^15 | 10 | 0.7415 | 0.9337 | 32 KB |
| **2^14** | **1** | **0.7854** | **0.9478** | **16 KB** |
| 2^13 | 10 | 0.7756 | 0.9444 | 8 KB |
| 2^12 | 10 | 0.7585 | 0.9372 | 4 KB |

### Baseline benchmark

Structural features alone top out at F1 0.634 (XGBoost): most blocklisted spam/parked domains have no structural tells. Lexical memory is what unlocks quality:

| model | F1 | AUC |
|---|---|---|
| gaussian_nb | 0.5674 | 0.8197 |
| logistic_regression (structural) | 0.6006 | 0.8298 |
| decision_tree d8 (structural) | 0.6157 | 0.8112 |
| lightgbm 30x6L15 (structural) | 0.6222 | 0.8515 |
| xgboost 30x4 (structural) | 0.6341 | 0.8598 |
| gram-only LR 2^15 | 0.6953 | 0.9180 |
| **AdVig hybrid LR 2^14** | **0.7854** | **0.9478** |

## On-Device Benchmarks (NodeMCU ESP8266)

Measured on hardware (Arduino core 3.1.2, 240 stratified test domains x 30 passes = 7,200 inferences per run):

| Metric | 80 MHz | 160 MHz |
|---|---|---|
| Avg latency | **1840 us/domain** | **933 us/domain** |
| Min / Max | 1280 / 3043 us | 650 / 1879 us |
| Throughput | ~543 domains/s | ~1072 domains/s |
| Gram-hash phase | 144 us | 77 us |
| Structural phase | 1685 us | 850 us |

- **Memory**: int8 weights live in flash (`PROGMEM`, 16.4 KB, zero RAM); working set is a 2048-entry tally table + bookkeeping (~7.7 KB static). Free heap: **42,192 B**.
- **Accuracy on-device** (balanced sample): acc 0.8792, precision **0.9789**, recall 0.7750, F1 0.8651 - bit-exact with host emulation, **100% parity (240/240)**, identical prediction bitmap at both clock speeds.
- **Scaling is linear with clock** (compute-bound); other MCUs scale predictably.
- Known headroom: the structural phase dominates (~92% of latency) due to linear PROGMEM lexicon scans; sorted arrays + binary search should roughly halve total latency.

At ~1,000 domains/s, one NodeMCU comfortably keeps up with household-scale DNS traffic.

## Use Cases

- **DNS-level Pi-hole replacement** - answer DNS queries with an on-device verdict; fully offline, zero external dependencies
- **Router/firewall firmware integration** - classify unknown domains at query time, complementing exact-match blocklists
- **Parental controls & IoT gateways** - block ad/tracker endpoints on devices that cannot run browser extensions
- **Privacy tooling research** - a compact baseline model for tracker-domain generalization studies
- **Browser/proxy pre-fetch screening** - cheap first-pass filter ahead of heavier analysis

## Features

### Structural (34)

`length`, `label_count`, `max_label_len`, `digit_count`, `max_digit_run`, `hyphen_count`, `entropy`, `vowel_ratio`, `starts_with_www`, `has_punycode`, `subdomain_depth`, `tld_trusted`, `tld_adheavy`, `tld_is_cctld`, `tld_length`, `tok_ad`, `tok_advert`, `tok_banner`, `tok_promo`, `tok_sponsor`, `tok_track`, `tok_analytics`, `tok_metrics`, `tok_telemetry`, `tok_beacon`, `tok_pixel`, `tok_tag`, `tok_click`, `tok_impression`, `tok_affiliate`, `tok_syndication`, `tok_vendor`, `tok_bigtech`, `bigtech_and_adtoken`

### Hashed lexical memory

Char 3/4/5-grams over `.domain.` hashed with FNV-1a (random sign projection) into 2^14 buckets. Inference collapses to `logit = SCALE * gram_sum + BIAS + dot(STRUCT_W, feats)` - trivially portable to any MCU in C.

## Usage

### Python (ONNX Runtime)

```python
import numpy as np
import onnxruntime as ort
from gramlib import hash_grams          # reference hasher (in repo files)
from features import extract_features   # reference structural extractor

sess = ort.InferenceSession("advig.onnx", providers=["CPUExecutionProvider"])
domain = "ads.tracker-cdn.example.com"

grams = np.zeros((1 << 14), dtype=np.float32)
for idx, val in hash_grams(domain, buckets=1 << 14).items():
    grams[idx] += np.sign(val)
x = np.concatenate([grams, extract_features(domain)]).astype(np.float32)[None]

p_block = sess.run(["prob"], {"features": x})[0].item()
blocked = p_block >= 0.477
```

### ESP8266 / NodeMCU (C)

Flash `advig_weights.h` alongside the ~40-line scorer (reference firmware in the linked training repo). Decision rule on device:

```c
logit = GRAM_SCALE_F * gsum_int32 + BIAS_F + dot(STRUCT_W, struct_feats);
block = (logit >= ADVIG_T_LNIT_F);
```

## Verification & Reproducibility

- **ONNX parity** - 100% match between ONNX Runtime and closed-form sigmoid(Gemm).
- **On-device parity** - 100% (240/240) agreement between NodeMCU firmware and host emulation; confusion matrices identical.
- **Deterministic** - identical test predictions across seeds 42/1/7/123.
- **No leakage** - train/val/test disjoint at the registrable-domain level; synthetic subdomains inherit their parent's split.
- **int8 verified end-to-end** - quantized weights re-evaluated after quantization, not assumed lossless.

## Limitations

- **Enumeration ceiling** - random parked/spam domains (`05tz2e9.com`) carry zero signal in their names; no string-based model can catch them. Pair AdVig with an exact-match blocklist: the list memorizes the tail, AdVig generalizes over unseen trackers.
- **"ad-" prefix traps** - `adyen.com`-style collateral exists (~1.9% FPR). Raise the threshold for allow-biased operation.
- **English-centric lexicons** - token lists are Western-market oriented.
- **Feed dependence** - inherits StevenBlack/AdAway/Yoyo coverage as of build date; retrain for fresh feeds.
- **Dataset noise** - Majestic top-1M contains some parked/ad-heavy registrable domains treated as ALLOW.

## Training Data

AdTrap v1: 713,539 rows, 70/15/15 split by registrable domain, seed 42.

| Source | Class | Domains |
|---|---|---|
| StevenBlack hosts (ads+trackers base) | BLOCK | 93,512 |
| AdAway | BLOCK | 6,540 |
| Yoyo | BLOCK | 3,515 |
| Majestic Million (overlap removed) | ALLOW | 400,000 |
| Synthetic legit subdomains (augmentation) | ALLOW | 220,000 |

## Citation

```bibtex
@misc{saidutta69_2026_advig,
  author = {Sai Dutta Abhishek Dash},
  title = {AdVig: Tiny On-Device Ad and Tracker Domain Classifier},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  howpublished = {\url{https://huggingface.co/saidutta69/AdVig}},
  note = {Trained on the AdTrap dataset}
}
```

Built on AdTrap + StevenBlack/hosts, AdAway, Yoyo, and Majestic Million. MIT licensed.