# Possible to forward only local-domain requests to specific upstream server?

**URL:** <https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/possible-to-forward-only-local-domain-requests-to-specific-upstream-server/62397>\
**Category:** Help\
**Created:** [April 12, 2023, 8:06pm UTC](https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/possible-to-forward-only-local-domain-requests-to-specific-upstream-server/62397 "2023-04-12T20:06:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 3

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**Author:** ![sofakng](https://discourse-cdn.pi-hole.net/user_avatar/discourse.pi-hole.net/sofakng/32/35834_2.png) [@sofakng](https://discourse.pi-hole.net/u/sofakng)\
**Post date:** [April 13, 2023, 12:03am UTC](https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/possible-to-forward-only-local-domain-requests-to-specific-upstream-server/62397/3 "2023-04-13T00:03:31Z")

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Thanks so much for the reply. I've also read [your other post](https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/conditional-forwarding-how-does-it-work/36644) on conditional forwarding but I'm a bit confused on how it works.

How does Pi-Hole determine if a request is for a local machine versus a remote machine?

I'm running Pi-Hole in a podman (docker?) container on my UDM Pro with a static ip address. How does it know that "myserver.home.mydomain.com" is a local request versus "www.google.com" ?

I see that Pi-Hole asks for the local network in the conditional forwarding setup but I still don't see how that helps Pi-Hole understand if a request is for a local network machine.

EDIT: It looks like on my setup I need to specify the "Local domain name" otherwise all requests are going to the public/primary DNS servers.

Thanks so much for the help!

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_[View the full topic](https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/possible-to-forward-only-local-domain-requests-to-specific-upstream-server/62397)._