Before getting complaints from wife and kids that their sites/ads/games are no longer showing, I set up a test using my PC and my Ipad. While the ads have disappeared on PC, they keep showing up on Ipad. I have looked at various posts both here and on Reddit, but I am stuck and therefore I am reaching out for help.
Here is my configuration:
Raspberry Pi 4B 2GB
Raspbian Buster Lite ( Version: September 2019, Release date: 2019-09-26, Kernel version: 4.19)
Hostname: mypi
Ethernet Interface:eth0
Pi-hole IPv4 address:192.168.1.121/24
Pi-hole IPv6 address: No IPv6
Installation:
-- Command: curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash
-- Upstream DNS provider: Cloudflare
-- Other items during installation: All default settings
PC:
Windows 10
IP automatically obtained from Netgear router
DNS set manually to 192.168.1.121
No other DNS-server configured
Ipad:
IOS 13.1.1
Wifi only
IP automatically obtained from Netgear router
DNS set manually to 192.168.1.121
No other DNS-server configured
Edit: I cleared my network settings and reconfigured them, but the problem persists.
Router:
Netgear 7800
No IPV6 enabled
Expected Behaviour:
PC:
Ads are blocked
Ipad:
-Ads are blocked
Actual Behaviour:
PC:
Ads are blocked
Pi-hole admin console shows that the PC uses pi-hole in the Network tab
Ipad:
Ads are not blocked
Pi-hole admin console shows that the Ipad does not use pi-hole in the Network tab
Before installing pi-hole, I already configured my Ipad to set the DNS to 192.168.1.121. At that moment I was unable to reach any site. After installing pi-hole, I could reach websites again, so the DNS-resolution seems to work. However ads are not blocked.
Alternatively:
PC:
Surfing to "ad.doubleclick.net" returns "IP-address cannot be found"
Ipad:
Surfing to "ad.doubleclick.net" opens a Google site
The iPad likely has an IPv6 server available to it. Look in the iPad Settings > Wifi > select the circled "i" next to your SSID > and then see if there are IPv6 addresses assigned. You may have to go back to "automatic" DNS and see what IP's populate from the router.
There is also a possiblity that other software is running on that iPad that is redirecting the DNS (i.e. 1.1.1.1).
If you don't need IPv6 on your network (and very few users do), I would disable IPv6 on the router and eliminate this as a possible leakage path around Pi-Hole.
Here are some example screens from an iPad on a network without IPv6 enabled and manual DNS assignment.
I just disabled Wifi and enabled Airplane mode for about 30 seconds. After reconnecting, the problem still persists. I also tried clearing the network settings and resetting my Ipad, but ads still show up.
When you load a web page on the iPad (for example cnn.com) and tail the pihole log at the same time (pihole -t), are you seeing commensurate traffic in Pi-Hole or is nothing going through Pi-Hole at all?
Nothing shows up in the log when using my Ipad, so it seems nothing goes through. This matches the fact that the Network tab in the Pi-hole admin console shows the Ipad does not use Pi-hole.
There is no VPN configured on my Ipad.
I quickly tested with my wife’s Ipad (which is still on IOS 12) and ads are not blocked either.
Maybe there is some setting I changed ages ago, but I have no idea what it could be.
Is your PC on a wired network connection? If so, there may be a router setting that is providing a different DNS to wireless clients. There have occasionally been issues with users getting wireless clients connected to Pi-Hole. I would carefully walk through all the route setting options and review each one. This might be tedious, but should be done.
My PC is on a wired connection indeed. I checked and there is no separate setting for wireless. Am I right that this should only play a role when I changed the DNS on my router? For the moment I changed the DNS on my PC and Ipad for testing purposes.
Maybe I should ignore the Wife Acceptance Factor and just change my router setting, aka ‘testing in production’?
I made the jump and set my router's DNS to pi-hole.It seemed to work at first, but then I saw this in the log: "Maximum number of concurrent DNS queries reached (max: 150)"
As a result I lost my internet connection, due to the flood of DNS requests.
It turns out this was caused by a bug in the latest firmware version of my Netgear router, as indicated in a post on the Netgear forum. From Archived - NETGEAR Communities "External DNS works fine, but I installed firmware version 1.0.2.62 today and I am now unable to use an internal server (Pi-hole) when configured as the DNS server for my network."
So: I downgraded my Netgear firmware to 1.0.2.60 and finally my devices play nice with pi-hole.
I can update this then:
Actual Behaviour:
PC:
Ads are blocked
Pi-hole admin console shows that the PC uses pi-hole in the Network tab
Ipad:
Ads are blocked
Pi-hole admin console shows that the Ipad uses pi-hole in the Network tab
@jfb: Thank you very, very much for taking your time to help me troubleshooting this issue and for your suggestions. Really appreciated!
