PiHole and Network noob. Intermittent slow page loads. 1 client with all queries

Help docker
1

I set up docker on an old computer and wanted to run PiHole. I've been running into issues since the beginning. Right now, I have the system somewhat usable and stable. Websites are sometimes taking over 15 seconds to load when using PiHole as a DNS server. before, everything would load very fast. Initially I was trying to let PiHole be my DHCP server, but it wasn't handing out Ip addresses, so I let my router do that again.

My Setup:
2014 HP Prodesk 600 g1 twr
Windows 10 Pro
i3 4130
1TB HDD
12 GB DDR3 Ram
Hardwired Ethernet
Asus ZenWiFi AX Mesh Tri-band Wifi 6 (2 routers)

Docker Command I Used to Set Up Container:

docker run
  --privileged
  --name pihole 
  -e TZ=America/New_York 
  -e WEBPASSWORD=password 
  -e SERVERIP=192.168.50.201 
  -v pihole_app:/etc/pihole 
  -v dns_config:/etc/dnsmasq.d 
  -p 80:80 
  -p 53:53/tcp -p 53:53/udp 
  -p 67:67/udp -p 67:67/tcp 
  --restart=unless-stopped 
  pihole/pihole

HP Prodesk 600 g1 IP: 192.168.50.201
Router IP: 192.168.50.1

Router Settings:
LAN:
DHCP: enabled
DNS Server 1: 192.168.50.201
Advertise router's IP in addition to user-specified DNS: No
Manually Assigned IP: 192.168.50.201
WAN:
DNS Server 1: 192.168.50.201

I am actively getting queries through the dashboard, but almost all queries come through 1 single client IP: 172.17.0.1

Expected Behaviour:

Individual clients with their own queries and no intermittent page load issues.

Actual Behaviour:

1 client with almost all queries, and 15 second+ page loading times

Debug Token:

https://tricorder.pi-hole.net/qb5CDYXK/

2

http proxy could help you there. my guess would be that you are not getting DNS responses in timely manner hence delay. If is that Pi-hole isnt responding to your computer or upstream DNS ? You might want to find out.

RE DHCP - is your Pi-hole getting DHCP requests ?

3

How would I go about verifying that it's not receiving the upstream DNS?

I turn off the DHCP server since it seemed to make things worse which means I probably didn't have it configured correctly.

Also this morning when I woke up my phone and smart devices were not connected to the internet. So I enabled a 2nd DNS server for my WAN to an AdGuard DNS. Not sure why it would just drop connection in the middle of the night.

4

I honestly think basic DNS / DHCP knowledge is essential when you start using pihole ...

pihole config lives in /etc/pihole/setupVars.conf (or search for it) - it will tell you what DNS servers it uses

you could try dig - this will tell you how long it takes to get a response ... although if you are running into this rarely it might not be easy to catch.

however I would possibly consider http proxy tool which is showing http request / responses + DNS ... or simple packet capture.

is that something you can easily reproduce etc etc ... maybe you use a firewall and it is blocking single internal network IP which 'appears' to be hammering DNS ? maybe ...

options are many

5

Well in the Web dashboard it should that its receiving queries and I enabled 2 iPv4 OpenDNS services to use for upstream as well. So, if that's what you mean then it is definitely passing requests to google, and open dns. I'm just bad at most network terminology and command line interfaces. I'm a software developer but network never clicked for me personally.

This http proxy tool, where in the pipeline would I set that up? Would this simply be for data capture or for potential resolution of my issues.

Also, any thought as to why my WAN devices would just not be connected to the internet?

6

start from drawing diagram of your own network to make sure you understand how pihole connects and via what devices ...

you (nor I) ever said that your pihole 'doesnt get responses' at all, but rather that intermittently browsing - when using pihole as DNS server - is slow.

you already limited possibilities - it happens ONLY when you use pihole as DNS ... hence you know that its something to do with
a) network filtering / access 'when' querying (DNS) pihole 'or'
b) when pihole is querying upstream DNS

next step is to verify why. some network filtering devices could / would limit DNS queries send out to internet - in such case your pihole could get some queries dropped or whatever ... etc .

  1. is this behaviour reproducible - > should be easier
  2. can you reproduce that with simple cli command on pihole (dig or host) -> is accessing ebay.com is slow keep trying to see if you can reproduce it there... etc

you could try changing DNS servers on pihole to see if you can limit that to using specific DNS upstream ... thats also an option ...

although , network capture from the affected computer could tell you what is happening and suggest possible answers (e.g. DNS timeouts etc)

I honestly think you are beyond pihole as a culprit - its rather your network / filtering etc. My presumption would be that you did build / configure etc pihole correctly just something is happening somewhere causing it to be slow in response .

I am not sure how useful debug logs from pihole are but if you generate them and give me access I would be happy to take a look if it gives any clues there.

7

link , token you added initially seem 'empty'

8

Only Pi-hole team is able to access the token.

For other users the link will never open.

9

thanks

10

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