First time trying this. My ARRIS ATT router wont let me modify DNS so I want to try my PiZero as a DHCP server.
Arris router
|Device IPv4 Address|192.168.1.254|
|DHCPv4 Netmask|255.255.255.0|
|DHCP Server|On|
|DHCPv4 Start Address|192.168.1.64|
|DHCPv4 End Address|192.168.1.253|
|DHCP Leases Available|158|
|DHCP Leases Allocated|32|
DHCP server is Enabled
Range of IP addresses to hand out
From 10.0.2.201 To 10.0.2.251
Router (gateway) IP address
Router 192.168.1.254
As per this mail, I am not understanding how this works. If i think of the pi hole as a DHCP rounter, i should be able to connect to it and route all traffic through it using its IP address or Router Gateway?
Am I wrong in understanding how this works?
Expected Behaviour:
I was expecting to see the PiHole be a new wifi connection point.
Actual Behaviour:
Nothing, Looking at dnsmasq,
no address range available for DHCP request via wlan0
You wouldn't see any other Wifi connection point, the router would still provide WiFi using the same network name. The difference lies under the surface, where Pi-Hole would act as DHCP server once this is enabled on the Pi-Hole and then disabled on the router. Do make sure your PiZero has a static IP address (can be set on your router).
You would be able to verify by checking if DNS requests are being handled by the Pi-Hole, looking at the graphs and the query logs.
Hope this helps!
So if the PI is the DHCP server with an address range, shouldnt it be visible? How does my ATT router know about other clients if DHCP is turned off?
Is there a good breakdown showing the path that net traffic takes when configured in these ways? are there block or flow diagrams? I feel like i am missing something basic here...
Someone a lot more knowledgeable will be along soon, but the way you to make it visible is to see in the network part of Pi-Hole dashboard, where you should see which devices are connected and their IP address. Once their IP will be refreshed, the Pi-Hole should provide an IP address in the range you specified.
The ATT router will still provide WiFi functionality (amongst others) but will no longer function as DHCP server. Typically in a network, devices look if there is a DHCP server present and use whatever is offered.
Turning your Zero into an access point is not necessary to deploy Pi-hole as DNS and/or DHCP server in your network.
The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol is distributing information about your local network among its clients, e.g. netmask, local network name, gateway, DNS servers, etc. It's most important feature is to assign an IPv4 address to a client.
Having two DHCP servers in the same network is not exactly forbidden, but it is not very desirable either. When clients broadcast their request for a DHCP lease in a network with two DHCP servers, it becomes non-deterministic which of those servers will be considered by a client, i.e. a client may choose to acknowledge a lease by either one of the servers.
However, if your router does neither allow to properly configure Pi-hole as DNS server nor to disable DHCP, you can try to shrink your router's DHCP address range to just accomodate Pi-hole and have Pi-hole's DHCP server manage the remaining address space. If you can, configuring a DHCP lease reservation (aka fixed or static IP address) in your router and/or setting an (identical) static IP address on device for Pi-hole is recommended.
In any case, you should make sure that Pi-hole's and your router's DHCP ranges do not overlap.
As long as you keep distributing your router's IP as gateway, traffic in your network will continue to flow as normal, with the excpetion of DNS packets - these are going to Pi-hole, of course.
As my router will not allow me to change the DNS, I would like to try to use the pi first before i go tearing it all up.
I just updated to the latest version using Stretch as the OS.
In my original question, If i turn on DHCP with that address range, should I be able to see and attach to the pi the same way i do with the router now?
I do not see any new SSID names and cannot seem to connect to an IP address.
I would like to try it out but first I would like to connect to it. What do i need to do for it to act like my router or are you saying it wont?
So my assumption is wrong on assuming that the pihole could take the place of my router.
The wiki page in the link indicate if it is DHCP, it would provide IP addresses to requesters on the network. That is what i was assuming would happen.
So even if i turned off the DHCP feature on my router, I would not see the pi as an access point.
If i was to enable DHCP on the pi with a range, what is the use case?
