Router Primary DNS, Secondary and Terinary

[Gordon1]

I have a Arris DG860 bought rom my local cable company. For years I set up 3 unique DSN servers. I "thought" that if google(8888) went down the DNS would resolve to the Secondary(1111) and then on to the third(cable xxxx).

From reading the FAQ it seems I was mistaken, it seems Windows 10 can ask any or all of the 3 DNS to provide a resolution? Can the OS be "fixed"?

Pi-hole recommends only setting up the primary DNS as the pi-hole for maximum ad blocking. I only had the pi-hole installed for less than a week and I have already encountered an issue. I went out of town, and my wife could not catch up with her CBS all-access soap opera's, and I felt her wrath. I told her to unplug the pi-hole and then CBS All-access should work. It did NOT, because the router did not have a secondary DNS address. In fact, nothing worked!

When I came home I white listed the CBS all-access ad/web site and CBS now works fine. I added a secondary DNS (1111) and when I unplug the pi-hole the network continues to work just fine.

Why is that so bad? What can I do better? I much rather have a few ads enter the system than suffer the scorn of a women denied her soap opera's!

Thanks

[jfb]

@Gordon1

told her to unplug the pi-hole and then CBS All-access should work. It did NOT, because the router did not have a secondary DNS address. In fact, nothing worked!

You can set up a bookmark on your wife's computer so she can disable/enable Pi-Hole.

Or, you can manually assign her computer to a DNS other than Pi-Hole.

@Gordon1

I added a secondary DNS (1111) and when I unplug the pi-hole the network continues to work just fine.

Why is that so bad?

For the reasons you mentioned - this provides a bypass around Pi-Hole. Some of your traffic can bypass Pi-Hole and you have no control over this.

[Gordon1]

Thank you for the quick reply, I should have mentioned CBS All access is a "app" on my Sony (Android/chromcast) TV. AFAIK the ability to customize the network configuration on the TV is near nil. Also I should have mentioned I have the pi-hole acting as a whole house Server.

[jfb]

If Pi-Hole is also acting as DHCP server, you can exclude that client and assign it an alternate DNS using dnsmasq configuration settings.

[Gordon1]

Thanks, I just might do that for the TV. Pi-hole does little to nothing of value on my TV (youtube,CBS,netflx,sling).

[jfb]

Things you can do with dnsmasq!

I came up with some stuff that eases things a little bit with my Pi-Hole life. Some of the ideas here, I gathered from around the internet. I wanted to share my findings. These configs are to be placed in /etc/dnsmasq.d I do realize that these could easily be combined into a single 04-custom.conf, but for the ease of teaching myself things I can do with this,, I like them seperate. Bypass Pihole by MAC Address What this Does: Find the MAC Address of the device that you want to skip pihole, …