I'm completely new to raspberry pi and pi-hole so forgive my naivite.
Expected Behaviour:
Newly installed Pihole blocking simple ads on most websites. I'm running pihole on a Zero 2 W, with a Netgear C6250 modem/router combo, and connecting to the internet via a macbook air and iphone 13. I tried setting the primary DNS server to Pihole's IP address in the "internet settings" tab in netgear admin settings, but that did not block ads after reboot of router/laptop/phone. So I returned the router to factory settings and in the "LAN settings" I disabled the router's DHCP and enabled the pihole's DHCP. Below are router setting choices:
Pihole is not blocking simple ads when viewed in a web browser that does not have adblock extensions. That same webpage has no ads when viewed in web browser with adblock extensions. My devices appear in the "network" of Pihole's web interface, with queries, but the ads are not being blocked, though I have two updated blocklists (141K domains). When I look at the query log on Pihole it shows that it is blocking domains, but it doesn't seem to be doing so when I am on the websites themselves (such as espn.com).
It appears that my devices are not initially using pihole's IP as their DNS, if that might be were the issue lies:
To fix this I disabled IPv6 on my laptop, and that worked to get pihole to block ads on the laptop. In order to have pihole block ads on other devices without manually configuring each one, I am still looking for a way to get pihole to effectively run for all of my devices.
Very likely, that ::1 is your router's IPv6 address, i.e. your router is advertising its own IPv6 address as DNS server, allowing your clients to by-pass Pi-hole.
You'd have to find a way to configure your router to stop advertising its own IPv6 as DNS server or to advertise your Pi-hole host machine's IPv6 instead.
You'd have to consult your router's documentation sources on further details for its IPv6 configuration options.
If your router doesn't support configuring IPv6 DNS, you could consider disabling IPv6 altogether, provided you'd not depend on IPv6 for reasons.
If your router doesn't support that either, your IPv6-capable clients will always be able to bypass Pi-hole via IPv6.
Thank you.
Thank makes good sense. Unfortunately I do not think my router allows me much IPv6 configuration. I don't expect you to be a netgear router tech, but if you see anything on their interface that could allow me to get Pi-hole's IPv6 please let me know. For example, is there a Pi-hole DNS server IP that I can add as the primary (and only) IPv6 server?
I'm not sure if your router has other options.
I don't have a Netgear router, but I searched and found an online emulator.
This emulator is showing a very similar interface, but with a different Firmware version and more options.
In this case it's possible to select many other configuration options, even disable IPv6.
Thank you. A quick look on the forums showed that for my ISP (xfinity) and that modem/router combo I cannot change the IPv6 settings beyond what is shown in my previous screen capture. ("Its because its set by the ISP. Its built into the firmware on these combo devices for IPV6 to be enabled. there's not a disable option unless the ISP requests that firmware option. Most don't.") Dang.
I will continue to see if I can find a way around it, but otherwise it looks like changing modem/router would be the only option for me to enable Pi-hole to work for all my devices without individually disabling IPv6 on each, correct?
edit: I saw another post on here that had the same issues but different router/modem.
I wonder if you have found any routers/modems that seem to work with xfinity/comcast and Pi-hole, or if there is a better route to simply assign the Pi-hole as the only DNS server. I tried this initially, since my router/modem can do so, but it did not block ads, so I went the DHCP route.
Thanks for the help everyone.
I've learned a lot about in-home networking through this process and my pihole is set up and working correctly now.
For me it was easy enough to add pihole's IPv6 address in the IPv6 DNS settings on my router (screenshot in a previous post), since I couldn't disable IPv6 entirely, in addition to the IPv4 address in the IPv4 DNS settings. It is working as intended now, and indeed my devices were bypassing the pihole as Bucking_Horn pointed out.
