New modem/router for Pihole?

I've got an old Pi 2 to have a play with, and want to use it for PiHole.

Unfortunately, I'm with Now TV, and their router (a rebadged Sky SR102 as far as I can tell) doesn't allow you to change the DNS servers, so I can't get all the internet traffic to go through the Pi.

I've got an unlocked Huwaei HG612 BT Openreach modem and a so far unused Ubiquiti Unifi AP AC Lite, would I be able to use them with the Pi, or would an all in one modem router, or just a new modem, be the better option?

If you fresh install Raspbian on the SD card, check out the "headless" section on below link to have SSH activated at boot:

Once thats done, boot up Pi and on the routers DHCP section, lookup the IP address thats been assigned to Pi, through DHCP, to allow you to connect via SSH.

I've got a modem from my ISP, a router with WiFi of my own and Pi-hole does DHCP and DNS for my network clients.

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Thanks for the reply, I've now enabled SSH, but it still doesn't seem to be blocking ads as it should.

Router settings :-

PiHole admin :-

PiHole DHCP :-

No adblocking detected :-

Based on your screen shots, Pi-Hole is blocking domains. That's an indicator that PiHole is working properly. You have active clients, queries are being received and processed (301 queries blocked).

You can determine if Pi-Hole is working properly - from the terminal on your Pi run these two commands and see if the known ad-serving domain is blocked on the first command, and not blocked on the second command:

dig doubleclick.com - this will route to your default DNS server, which for the Pi should be PiHole. Your returned IP address should be the IP of your PiHole. You should also see this domain as Pi-Holed in your query log.

dig doubleclick.com @8.8.8.8 - this will bypass PiHole and route the request directly to the Google DNS and the DNS address for this domain should return. You should not see this request in your query log because the request will not be presented to PiHole.

The last screen shot indicates that a particular client is not getting ads blocked. Was that browser on the Pi or on a client machine? If it's on a client, the next step will be to ensure that client has no alternative DNS addresses and isn't bypassing the PiHole. Another option could be that the router is providing a parallel DNS path even though the DHCP is turned off, and only some of the requests are going through the Pi-Hole.

1st query

2nd query

The last image is what I get from either my mobile or laptop browser.

I use a site called The Awesomer, with my old Firefox adblockers turned on, I see no ads at all, using Pihole, they're everywhere. :frowning:

That's a step in the right direction. Your Pi-Hole IP address is 192.168.0.252, it appears. The first screen shows that Pi-Hole blocked this address and returned it's own IP. The second screen shows the correct IP for doubleclick.com since it came from Google, not Pi-Hole.

From your laptop, run either dig or nslookup with the same arguments. From the laptop, the router is in the equation. The previous test from the Pi used the Pi-Hole specified DNS service and had no interaction with your router for DNS.

The reason your other software works to block ads is that the software is local to that machine and blocks ads at the client. What we need to do is get your devices to go through Pi-Hole only. As is, they have a sneak DNS path around Pi-Hole, so we'll figure out if it's in the client or in the router.

One step closer again now after I changed the DNS settings on my laptop Wi-Fi from 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.0.1 to obtain automatically...

Only my mobile phone to sort out now, lol!

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After you get your clients sorted out, I would recommend getting your own router, so you can control your own network. I'm not a big fan of combined modem/routers (personal preference). If you are currently leasing equipment, you may find that your payback period for buying your own is no more than 18 months.

My ISP will either lease equipment to me or let me run my own. The modem has to work with their equipment, but they don't care about the router brand or model. So, I own my modem and routers.

Thanks for all the replies jfb, much appreciated.

Trying to set my mobile up now, given it a static IP address, but it doesn't seem right yet.

Screenshot from Network Info II :-

P.S., any modem / router that you'd recommend? I'm happy to use the Ubiquiti for wireless.

I wouldn't think your mobile would need a static IP - the DNS server (in your case Pi-Hole) should dole them out. Sometimes you need to flush the caches on a mobile device and renew the lease to clear out the old DNS info.

I bought a modem from the "supported devices" list at my ISP; an Arris unit (6183 maybe?). Modems either work or they don't work. You buy it and the ISP provisions it. Once it works, it generally keeps working and you never mess with it.

I haven't purchased a router in a long time, so no good advice here. Look at Tom's Guide (https://www.tomsguide.com) for some good reviews on what's available now.

My home network is a pair of Apple Airport Extreme routers, hardwired together via ethernet to form a meshed network. Each broadcasts the same SSID and password, and devices seamlessly move from one to the other. Only the first one provides DHCP, the bottom is in bridge mode. This setup works fine for me (26 clients regularly) and covers my whole house and yard, so I've never changed it since install. Figure out what you need and buy accordingly.

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Billion 8800AXL arrived today, had good results with Billion in the past, hopefully that extra bit of configurability will allow me to tweak things to better work with Pihole. :slight_smile:

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