PiHole Not Responding for iPhone Only (Temporary)

The issue I am facing:
This morning I woke up and the internet was not working on my phone when connected through PiHole. Everything worked fine on cellular data or when using 8.8.8.8 as my DNS. I was unable to even access the internal network (192.168.1.etc). Restarting the phone did nothing.

I checked my computer (also connected through PiHole) and saw no issues, everything seemed to work fine. Tailing pihole.log showed no sign that the phone was even requesting any queries. I took a debug log during all this (qkjt9faeez).

After about an hour an a half of troubleshooting, the phone suddenly started working again and connecting/blocking adds correctly.

Details about my system:
PiHole - Latest (5.0), NOT running as a DNS server
Computer - Windows 10 (v1909)
Phone - iPhone 6s (iOS 13.5)
Pi - Raspberry Pi Zero W

What I have changed since installing Pi-hole:
Upgraded to 5.0 over the weekend. Everything had been running smoothly until now.

Debug Log: https://tricorder.pi-hole.net/qkjt9faeez/

This indicates a network problem, not a problem with pihole besides it is also your DHCP server. Let's see what your debug token brings to light.

How do you set DNS server in you clients? Manually on each client or per DHCP DNS-server.

Not now? Or also during the internet outage?

For clarity, I was experiencing the following issues:

  • On local WiFi and DNS pointed at PiHole: Cannot access external or internal network
  • On local WiFi and DNS pointed at 8.8.8.8: Able to access both external or internal network
  • On Cellular Data: Able to access external network

This tells me that the PiHole was somehow not forwarding/responding to my query requests, because the network showed no signs that there was a problem. For reference, I listed my debug tolken above which was taken while the problem was ongoing: qkjt9faeez

DHCP is managed by my router (personal router, Netgear Nighthawk R7800), and PiHole is run on my Raspberry Pi (has been for the past ~8 months). There's an issue with the Netgear firmware and I cannot point the DNS at an internal client, so I manually set each DNS on the clients themselves to point at the Pi.

Also, when I said PiHole is "NOT running as a DNS server", I had meant DHCP. This is the same state the entire time and I have not changed anything around this.

Thanks for clarification.

When you say "internal network" how did you try to access devices. By IP or hostname?

By IP address. For example, my Pi is on 192.168.1.4, so I point my DNS to that address to enable pihole blocking.

Your debug log is normal and the events you describe indicate that the problem is not with Pi-hole most likely. The iPhone is likely the cause of the problem. If there are no queries shown from the iPhone, then the iPhone queries are going elsewhere.

On the DNS settings for the iPhone - Settings > WiFi > click the circle i next to you network name > DNS.

What DNS server(s) are shown?

This morning when the issue was happening it was set to 192.168.1.4 (pihole). I then adjusted it to 8.8.8.8 (while still connected to WiFi) and was able to access my internal/external network. I turned off WiFi so that I was connected over cellular only and was still able to access the external network. Finally, I reset it to 192.168.1.4 (pihole) and I was NOT able to access either the internal or external networks.

After about an hour or two it started working normally again.

Your debug log shows that the IPv4 address of Pi-hole is a different IP:

IPV4_ADDRESS=192.168.1.18/24

That is correct. I was using 192.168.1.4 as a stand in instead of the actual address. Even though it's not really necessary when talking about the internal network, it's just an over abundance of caution. So yes, the actual address internally for the PI is 192.168.1.18.

It makes it difficult for us to help you with inaccurate information. These are private IP ranges and invisible to others outside your network. Masking these is unneccessary.

Of course, just a habit on my end.

Is your problem resolved now? iPhone using Pi-hole?

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