The issue I am facing:
I have a Virgin VINCENT modem-router which necessitates me using pi-hole as my DHCP server. The VINCENT had its own DNS; the pi-hole was managing some traffic but ad traffic was coming through my whole network. When I try to set the pi-hole as the DNS on the VINCENT modem-router, Internet for the whole house is cut off (but the pi-hole is still managing some traffic).
Details about my system:
I have pi-hole running on a Raspberry Pi hard-wired into my Virgin VINCENT modem/router. The router is at 192.168.2.1; the Pi is at 192.168.2.19.
What I have changed since installing Pi-hole:
The pi-hole is set to be the DHCP server for the house. I have confirmed that it is the only DHCP server and that the DHCP server on the modem-router is turned off.
I've been using pi-hole as my DHCP server without incident for over a month, but ads are appearing everywhere, on all devices in the house.
This is not due to browsers circumventing DNS on their end; it is also happening in browsers where those features are confirmed off.
From previous threads, the issue seems to be that the VINCENT modem-router had its own DNS settings (207.164.234.193; 207.164.234.129). Despite the pi-hole being the house's only DHCP server, the theory was that the router was still pushing traffic through those DNSes, and I should update the router DNS settings to push all traffic to the pi-hole.
The issue is that when I do this, while the pi-hole continues to process traffic, I don't seem to be able to access the Internet normally, through browsers or via ping, on any device in the house.
First, I set the VINCENT modem-router DNS to
192.168.2.19 (pi-hole IP address)
1.1.1.1 (fallback)
After setting the DNS, and even after rebooting the modem, ping continued to work on my wired PC for various destinations, including sites I haven't tried in a while (cbc.ca, google.com, fark.com)
The Internet immediately stopped working on my phone and other devices in the house connected via wifi.
I shut down and rebooted the PC, and the Internet, including pings, no longer worked. I can still connect to and ping computers on the internal network.
In the pi-hole log, there are still queries coming from the Pc and devices in the house; watching the live feed, they are coming through (Windows, Synology, Microsoft, Firefox...) If I review Tools > Network, I can see both wired and wireless devices with "last query" after the IP address reset.
But no devices on the house can access the Internet. This includes the Pi that pi-hole is running on. Pings on the Pi deliver "Temporary failure in name resolution)". Pings on the PC (Windows) deliver "Ping request cound not find host ..."
When I run ipconfig on my desktop PC, it shows the default gateway as 192.168.2.1 (the router address).
When I run netsh interface ipv4 show dnsservers, it shows DNS servers configured through DHCP as the pi-hole address (192.168.2.19).
I have rebooted the modem; rebooted the Pi; shut down and restarted the PC; and have 'forgotten' the wifi and reconnected to it via my phone.
I've also deleted all the DHCP leases in settings > DHCP in the pi-hole. It's handing out new DHCP leases, but the devices receiving the leases still can't connect to the Internet (but I can see traffic for them in the query log)
In settings > pi-hole diagnosis, I'm seeing these errors:
Type NTP: Error in NTP client: Cannot resolve NTP servar address: try again
and
CONNECTION_ERROR Connection error (208.67.222.222#53): TCP connection failed (Host is unreachable)
Trying to update Gravity gives me "DNS resolution is currently unavailable. Waiting until DNS resolution is available."
After trying all of the above, I've reset the DNS on the router to restore Internet to the house; even that's a challenge; setting the router back to "Obtain DNS information automatically" didn't restore service (even though it did revert back to the DNS IP addresses above). I had to manually set the VINCENT DNS to 8.8.8.8 / 1.1.1.1 and reboot the device a few times to get Internet back online.
