Right now I have a Spectrum modem only - Netgear R7800 - Pi-Hole running.
I know nothing or very little about networking, routers, or Raspberry Pi but with forums like this, internet and videos today I can figure out most anything. Over look me if I don't use proper terms though.
I had Netgear's Parental Controls / OpenDNS heavy filtering my kids devices. Set static IPs to the MAC numbers of their devices while allowing full internet to everything else.
I decided to go a step further and I installed DeitPi and Pi-Hole on the network. All seems to be working just fine other than it appears now I cant assign certain devices heavy filtering while allowing others less filtering.
My questions is.... If I buy another Netgear router, can I set it somehow to assign certain devices back to heavy filtering while some devices get less?
I cant wrap my head around it but in my head I vision internet comes in ... Pi-Hole does its thing... then hits second router where certain devices get a second filtering using the OpenDNS / Netgear's Parental Controls.
Actually, it's the other way round:
Some software on one of your devices requests some resource on the Internet, a filtering instance (like Pi-hole, OpenDNS, or a browser extension) assesses if it should be allowed or blocked, and if allowed, some server from the Internet will supply the resource as requested.
Before considering a new or additional router, you should find out whether it's possible to continue to use this for your kids devices. If it was possible to restrict just their devices before, I guess there's a chance that it should be able to coexist also with Pi-hole.
How did you configure Pi-hole:
In your router, as upstream DNS server (commonly an Internet/WAN kind of setting) or as local DNS server via DHCP?
Or manually setting as DNS on device?
Well, before PiHole it worked like this.... You enabled Parental Controls and it added the 208.67.222.222 numbers which went to OpenDNS which matched your IP with your OpenDNS account and settings.
I would like to be able to use both. With the Netgear OpenDNS Parental controls I can set each device's filtering.
Pros: is the filtering is monitored by OpenDNS and the list are up kept by them so less work on me. I can also set the filtering level I want on each device.
Cons: is the filtering and list are under their control. The "custom" allows you to pick categories but that is all.
Reason I wanted to "add" PiHole into the network was so I could also add and control "extra" lists of filtering I choose and have more control over AD blocking on all devices.
When I add PiHole into the system I remove that 208.67.222.222 number and add 192.168.1.5 which is the static IP number I set PiHole at.
I am thinking I can just add the 208.67.222.222 numbers in the PiHole webpage dashboard thing and it would do global filtering I have set on my OpenDNS account but I am not 100% sure of this.
That still don't solve me wanting to use the Netgear's one click option of just setting levels for each device though.
You didn't provide any direct answers to my questions, but from your descriptions, it would seem you configure your router to use Pi-hole as its upstream DNS server.
Try leaving that option as required by Live Parental Control and configure your router to distribute Pi-hole as local DNS server only via DHCP, and have your Pi-hole use your router's IP as its only upstream DNS server.
