Hello all! I think I’m having a bit of trouble with my home network. It appears that all of my devices are using my Pi-hole DNS because I can see them all listed in the UI. But, when I check the devices, I can see both the Pi-hole IP address and the router’s. Pi-hole is listed first, so I’m assuming everything is using that, but I don’t want the devices on my network to even know about the router DNS. I’ve heard of aggressive devices like Roku exploiting things like this.
I have an ASUS RT-AX55, so I believe I have full control of any setting I need. Any advice? Is this not even a problem?
EDIT: The latest firmware for the RT-AX55 is 3.0.0.4.386_52041, and, according to this (https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1050080/) I need 3.0.0.4.388.22525 to get the setting I need. @[email protected]’s screenshot shows the settings I need but I only have one DNS field. My suspicion was correct that the router was sending itself as DNS2. It’s an imperfect solution, but I changed my upstream DNS on my router to point to the Pi-hole for now. It’s a bit frustrating to not see the actual device the traffic is coming from instead of “router” but at least ALL of my traffic is now being routed through the correct DNS server.
At this point, it looks like I cross my fingers and try using Pi-hole DHCP again or get a new router.
EDIT2: I found that the RT-AX55 doesn’t have the UI to change DNS2, but the property is there if you use SSH. Just log in and run this: nvram set dhcp_dns2_x=<PIHOLE_IP> | nvram commit. Problem solved!
Thanks for the help, y’all!
The DHCP server pushes the DNS configuration to the clients. Is your Asus router running the DHCP server? If so, in DHCP configuration, set the DNS to point to your Pi-Hole
I have my router as DHCP and I also have the DNS set to the pi-hole which I’m assuming is how the devices are getting it. I’m just not sure why it’s getting my router IP as well.
Perhaps because the curent lease has not expired yet. Remove the lease in the router or force the client to get a new lease
Some devices get confused if there is only one DNS server provided by the DHCP… Maybe try setting your PiHole IP for both “Primary” and “Alternative” DNS server
I only have one dns field. Apparently, there’s a fork of asus software that provides 2 so my suspicion is that the router is automatically supplying its own IP as dns2
Then I’d recommend turning off the DHCP server on the Asus router and enabling it on the PiHole… inside the PiHole DHCP server configuration set your routers IP as a gateway address, and set the PiHole address as the DNS. This way, PiHole will manage the IP addresses in your network, which might be a better option overall.
I’m an advanced Mikrotik user overall, one thing they had not been great about is WiFi but their networking capabilities have always been amazing but had a steep learning curve if you’d be using their more advanced options. Though Mikrotik has finally released their WiFi6 devices whose WiFi is finally getting competitive with other WiFi router manufacturers. I can recommend hAP AX2 or hAP AX3, and definitely check their Youtube channel for getting their tutorials.
Mikrotik is definitely my go-to recommendation if you also want to learn networking fundamentals because it’s affordable and yet incredibly advanced whichever model you get because they all have pretty much the same RouterOS software within them. There’s even more things to thinker about ever since the release of their RouterOS 7 which is now based on Linux 5 kernels compared to their old RouterOS 6 which was based on Linux 3 kernels.
You can even run PiHole on the Mikrotik router itself
Your router is the gateway to the internet. I could be wrong here, but this is why your devices can see it. They need to know where they can access the internet.
DHCP is a protocol where the “router” tells the devices that it is the gateway.
So gateway refers to where to find the DHCP server?
Note that what is typically referred to a “router” in a home setting is actually many different devices/services in one. It’s usually a combination of router, switch, firewall, DHCP server, DNS server, Wireless Access Point, modem and probably a couple other things I forgot.
Gateway is the path where your devices go if it needs to go out of the network, eg. the Internet, different subnet.
No, that’s handled by ARP requests. In this case, it’s likely that the DHCP server is on the gateway, as that’s a pretty common setup for home ISP router arrangements.
Gateway refers to a router that has access to other networks. In this case, the default gateway, which will be the router that has access to the internet.
DNS or name servers are a separate option in DHCP leases, as are the IP addresses for DHCP servers, which are more of a windows thing generally.
In this case this comment is probably an accurate description of what’s happened:
https://lemm.ee/comment/7429148