I have a work laptop that uses a VPN connection almost exclusively.
I have attempted to create a group named "Exception" that should not attempt to block any sites. The laptop is the only member of this group.
Actual Behaviour:
Every so often, I get an alert in Pihole that this device has been rate-limited (most recently using IP address 192.168.3.175 on June 15, 2024 at 05:53:01).
Since this device is in my "Exception" group, shouldn't these types of rate limits not happen? Or is my understanding of the Groups setup wrong?
Excluding, via group management, only determines which block lists are applied or not. The devices still use pi-hole for DNS, if configured to do so via DHCP or manual client configuration, etc. If you want a device to bypass pi-hole completely, configure that client to use another upstream, non-pi-hole DNS.
Rate limits apply to all clients equally, including those assigned no blocking.
Your best approach is to manually set the DNS on that particular client to something other than Pi-hole. Then Pi-hole will see no traffic from that client.