Only 1/3 of clients are using Pi-Hole

So I added the PiHole address to the Network DNS settings. the NSLOOKUP now finds the PiHole.

Thanks.

Now I just have to figure out how to get the smart TVs pointed to the PiHole.

Your debug log contains the following information:

*** [ DIAGNOSING ]: Discovering active DHCP servers (takes 10 seconds)
   Scanning all your interfaces for DHCP servers
   
   * Received 300 bytes from eth0:192.168.0.1
     Offered IP address: 192.168.0.108
      dns-server: 192.168.0.5
      dns-server: 192.168.0.1
      router: 192.168.0.1
      --- end of options ---
(...)
   * Received 300 bytes from wlan0:192.168.0.1
     Offered IP address: 192.168.0.5
      dns-server: 192.168.0.5
      dns-server: 192.168.0.1
      router: 192.168.0.1
      --- end of options ---

There are two things to be noted from the above:

a) Your router is distributing its own IP address as DNS server alongside Pi-hole.

Devices will use any DNS server at their own discretion, i.e. they will by-pass Pi-hole by using your router for DNS.
This has likely been the case in the past as well, but when you switched to a different RPi and IP address initially, your clients may have learned to prefer your router then.

Try to configure your router to distribute only Pi-hole's IP address as local DNS server via DHCP. Fill available DNS slots with Pi-hole's IP only (or 0.0.0.0 if your router insists on IPs to differ).

b) You have two active network interfaces on your Pi-hole, wlan0 and eth0.

Your Pi-hole is currently configured for wlan0.

Additionally, your debug log indicates that there is a problem with resolving DNS via the IP address associated with the wlan0 interface:

*** [ DIAGNOSING ]: Name resolution (IPv4) using a random blocked domain and a known ad-serving domain
[✓] tools.3g.qq.com is 0.0.0.0 via localhost (127.0.0.1)
[✗] Failed to resolve tools.3g.qq.com via Pi-hole (192.168.0.5)
[✓] doubleclick.com is 172.217.2.110 via a remote, public DNS server (8.8.8.8)

Since a wired connection (eth0) is available, it would be preferable to use that instead.

Try running pihole -r and choose reconfigure to switch to your eth0 interface address.
If you do not need wlan0 for other reasons, consider disabling WiFi altogether.

Addressing both of these above issues should get your Pi-hole back in business.
Note that DHCP lease renewal would again be required for each of your clients to apply your altered configuration.

You're trying a lot of things in parallel, that makes harder to solve it.

  1. Decreasing lease time should have been done 1 day before migrating pihole, it's too late now. Just set it to a normal value.

  2. Choose 1 unique device to test, see if its lease is updated and it's using pihole. Manually refresh and release its IP settings and flush its DNS cache, and see if it migrates.

If it doesn't work, set its IP and DNS as static. If it works, then pihole is OK and your router has some issue. If even with static settings it doesn't work, then it's either your LAN (switch, AP, etc) making pihole unreachable to it, or pihole server. Move this device around the LAN and see where it works and where it doesn't.

Do it until u're sure pihole server, router and full LAN are working with this device.

  1. Devices using DHCP/SLAAC will in time update their IP settings and start using it, just give them some time no need to freak. In 24h it should be all done.

  2. Make a list of all your devices and verify the ones that aren't still using pihole. Most probably they're with static settings, then u either set them to get from DHCP/SLAAC or update the static settings. Or maybe u left some LAN area still not working.

  3. Some devices like TVs and HT receivers rarely access Internet, only to look for updated firmwares and so forth, so they may stay silent for some days before appearing on pihole. You can try to force them to look for updates now, or use them somehow so they use Internet.

  4. Some routers provide bandwidth traffic monitoring, OpenWRT in example has Yamon. You can use it to verify if they are indeed using internet of if they are silent.

I apologize that I have not updated this in real time.

So It may have been a combination of things as you suggest. I took the two Roku TVs offline today for other reasons. I did not realize that they were sending data out, and that their may be backend connections that I did not want considering they are being used for monitors and not TVs. However, there must have been an IP release because they are both now showing up in the network. So are both of the LG TVs.

I did implement the wlan down command line, and it seems to have resolved some of the dual port issues. More to follow on this one.

I did check the OpenWRT site before I reached out on this forum. There are no images for this specific router as of this post.

The only static IP on my lan is the RPi. So everything is running DHCP.

Now that I have all of the devices running through the RPi, I need to update my black list one list at a time.

I am still only getting a 8% block rate. It could be simply that everything is finally running through the PiHole so it will take some time for the queries to start blocking. I will update in a day or so once I have more data.

I did not have to change the upstream DNS settings within the router. But, I may make the change at some point in the future to see if it makes a difference in the total queries.

On a side note, I really appreciate all of the insights here. I would still be struggling with trying to understand what is going on.

More to follow.

Block rate is very relative. It depends on what sites you're accessing, how often u get to banners and trackers. Embedded systems like TVs rarely reach blocked domains, as they access only a few sites. It also depends on how many blocklists u added to pihole, as the more domains u have on final blocklist the higher the chance of any being blocked.

What u must look at is to assure all devices are using pihole only as DNS server and no queries are being leaked. There are situations that cause leak, like configuring DoH/DoT directly on browsers, and devices that have hardcoded DNS servers. Some routers advertise their own IPv6 address as DNS server when we only set pihole's IPv4 addr.

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