New modem/router for Pihole?

broona · 24 Jul 2018 at 14:42

I've got an old Pi 2 to have a play with, and want to use it for PiHole.

Unfortunately, I'm with Now TV, and their router (a rebadged Sky SR102 as far as I can tell) doesn't allow you to change the DNS servers, so I can't get all the internet traffic to go through the Pi.

I've got an unlocked Huwaei HG612 BT Openreach modem and a so far unused Ubiquiti Unifi AP AC Lite, would I be able to use them with the Pi, or would an all in one modem router, or just a new modem, be the better option?

sideways14a · 24 Jul 2018 at 14:49

You dont need to tell the router to do it, just get the individual units to use the new dns server.
Pihole is great.

SC0TTRS · 24 Jul 2018 at 14:52

sideways14a said:
You dont need to tell the router to do it, just get the individual units to use the new dns server.
Pihole is great.

This, just manually set DNS to use PI-Hole on each machine.

broona · 24 Jul 2018 at 14:52

sideways14a said:
You dont need to tell the router to do it, just get the individual units to use the new dns server.
Pihole is great.

I'd looked into that too, but I'd prefer to do it at the router side, and the Now TV hub is rubbish anyway...

sideways14a · 24 Jul 2018 at 15:40

Well if it wont let you then you will have to do it on the device side, its not like its much effort.

Steveocee · 24 Jul 2018 at 15:41

Can you turn off DHCP on the SKY router? Pi-Hole can do DHCP server so you can use it to do both DNS and hand out local IP which would give you what you need. The SKY router would effectively just be a GW/Firewall then.

broona · 24 Jul 2018 at 16:02

sideways14a said:
Well if it wont let you then you will have to do it on the device side, its not like its much effort.

I'm not bothered about the effort, I've been looking at getting a new router anyway, so was looking to kill 2 birds with 1 stone...

broona · 24 Jul 2018 at 16:03

Steveocee said:
Can you turn off DHCP on the SKY router? Pi-Hole can do DHCP server so you can use it to do both DNS and hand out local IP which would give you what you need. The SKY router would effectively just be a GW/Firewall then.

I've turned off DHCP and asked Pihole to do it instead, but it's still using the standard DNS on the router.

Steveocee · 24 Jul 2018 at 16:10

broona said:
I've turned off DHCP and asked Pihole to do it instead, but it's still using the standard DNS on the router.

That doesn't make sense. If your Pi-Hole is doing DHCP then change it to give out the Pi-Hole's IP as DNS1 and leave DNS2 blank. Once devices re-lease their IP they will be using Pi-Hole.

broona · 24 Jul 2018 at 16:24

Steveocee said:
That doesn't make sense. If your Pi-Hole is doing DHCP then change it to give out the Pi-Hole's IP as DNS1 and leave DNS2 blank. Once devices re-lease their IP they will be using Pi-Hole.

There's nowhere to change the DNS settings on the router, all I can do is turn DHCP off.

Steveocee · 24 Jul 2018 at 16:27

broona said:
There's nowhere to change the DNS settings on the router, all I can do is turn DHCP off.

Yes but DNS servers are handed out to clients via DHCP. If DHCP is off on your router and your Pi-Hole is giving out IP addresses then the Pi-Hole will dictate what IP's are given for DNS.

BigT · 24 Jul 2018 at 16:56

broona said:
I've turned off DHCP and asked Pihole to do it instead, but it's still using the standard DNS on the router.

This can’t really happen so something isn’t right. Is your Pi’s LAN IP, upstream DNS and gateway set correctly? Do you see your networked machines in the PiHole DHCP lease table in the UI?

broona · 24 Jul 2018 at 17:38

Something doesn't seem quite right, it's blocking a lot of adverts, but I can still see some, and the links on the Pihole site to the test sites shows adverts too.

broona · 24 Jul 2018 at 17:41

No adblocking detected :-

BigT · 24 Jul 2018 at 17:45

Perhaps DNS leakage or did you set static addresses on some of the devices you experience this on when experimenting and haven’t switched back to DHCP or flushed and renewed their addresses?

broona · 24 Jul 2018 at 17:46

BigT said:
Perhaps DNS leakage or did you set static addresses on some of the devices you experience this on when experimenting and haven’t switched back to DHCP or flushed and renewed their addresses?

Everything's always been set to DHCP, the only static address is for the Pi.

Caged · 24 Jul 2018 at 20:28

What is the Pihole set to hand clients as the DNS?

broona · 24 Jul 2018 at 20:57

Caged said:
What is the Pihole set to hand clients as the DNS?

Sorry? Not sure what that means.

sideways14a · 24 Jul 2018 at 21:00

drop to a command line and type ipconfig /all on a windows pc and we will see what its doing.

If pihole is told to handle ip addressing and the computers are set to use dhcp (with auto dns) then it will work as long as the router is not trying to do it as well.

broona · 25 Jul 2018 at 14:46

One step closer again now after I changed the DNS settings on my laptop Wi-Fi from 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.0.1 to obtain automatically…

Only my mobile phone to sort out now, lol!