Activate opendns parental control. While using pihole

[kohp]

Hello Everyone,
I HAVE RELATED COUPLE REQUESTS IN THIS THREAD.

My current configuration:

Netgear cable modem router is using Pihole DNS on Raspberry Pi 4, and I have an Netgear extender also using the same Pihole DNS and My Belkin router I have separately configured to be as "Mesh" for my basement, which has a different SSID from the other 2.

Currently things are working for ads filtering, but not as I would want to use as well my OpenDns account for content filtering like this...

so some devices in my network will have higher or lower filtering settings independently.... while all of them will be filtered through pihole ad blocking.

But when I do use my OpenDns Account to Activate Parental control... the pihole DNS in the Netgear Modem Router is replaced by both OpenDNS DNS... and ads goes through on devices...

And if I activate without the Parental Control OpenDNS, Pihole as my DHCP server and disable the one in the router, suddenly my networks devices can't connect to wifi any longer and I'm even prevented to access the admin of my Netgear Modem Router.... only the Admin interface of my Netgear extender remains accessible. (Even if I reboot all routers and devices - it took me 2 hours to get back on track! even skeptical to touch that again! )

One more thing, is under Pihole Admin, if I do use only the first configuration stated above, and activate pihole, which value am I supposed to insert into "Local Domain Name" under conditional forwarding in the advance DNS settings?

I had tried "Localhost" because I could quite locate the LDN. Since Pihole notifies it must be the exact same... I'm not sure where and how to find it, cause does not seem to be where it should be informed.... ( IS IT THIS?)

Thanks

Cable modem/router Netgear C6250-100NAS ,
Wifi Extender Netgear EX8000 Nighthawk X6S Tri-Band Mesh Extender
And Pi-hole running on Raspberry Pi 4.
MacBook Pro

@RamSet been reading some of your comments, and it seems you might be of a help...

[kohp]

Thank you @DanSchaper for adjusting.

[RamSet]

When you activate Parental Controls within the Netgear router, it takes over your personalized settings and uses (enforces) the Circle/Disney/Orbi DNS server(s), which I believe is(are) actually OpenDNS.
This happens when you use the Netgear as your DHCP server and you cannot bypass it, unless you specify the DNS server manually on the clients but then, it defies the whole purpose.

@kohp

But when I do use my OpenDns Account to Activate Parental control... the pihole DNS in the Netgear Modem Router is replaced by both OpenDNS DNS... and ads goes through on devices...

This is normal behavior as the whole parental control is handled via DNS by the netgear router.

@kohp

And if I activate without the Parental Control OpenDNS, Pihole as my DHCP server and disable the one in the router, suddenly my networks devices can't connect to wifi any longer and I'm even prevented to access the admin of my Netgear Modem Router....

Can't really follow this one but i'm assuming you disable DHCP within the Netgear and enable it with Pi-hole.

If you do that and your DHCP settings are correct, you shouldn't have any issues with the clients connecting and pulling IPs or any routing problems.

Something is probably off and is messing things up.

For your layout, in order to use a cascading setup, where some devices use Pi-hole, and some Pi-hole with OpenDNS, you'd have to bring in another Pi-hole instance (maybe a Zero-W?), one that you would assign to special devices via DHCP options at Pi-hole DHCP level.

You must disable Netgear's DHCP server, never use the Parental Controls within netgear as that takes over everything you have setup locally.

You need to use Pi-hole #1 as your DHCP server that will serve itself as the DNS to all connecting clients EXCEPT the ones defined in a separate file (based on MAC) that will get the Pi-hole #2 which uses the same blocklists as Pi-hole #1 BUT the upstream servers are the OpenDNS servers.

Now, there is one trick with OpenDNS that most don't know.

OpenDNS automatically applies your filter/parental controls when the queries are originating from your defined IP (which should be your WAN IP), in your OpenDNS account, under Personal Networks.

You just have to make sure you update your OpenDNS IP automatically every time is changed (use ddclient on the pi for automation).

That way, Pi-hole1 handles the DHCP and based on device hand out DNS servers.
If the device is not in the exception list, hand only Pi-hole DNS. If device IS in the exception list, hand second Pi-hole DNS that uses OpenDNS as upstream.