Unsure if Pihole+Unbound are blocking ads on iPhone

[Bucking_Horn]

Thank you for joining, MichaIng.

mDNS is not what Grady's issue is about.
As DNS resolvers, unbound as well as Pi-hole are not involved with mDNS.

The debug log revealed that only the homebridge service bound to port 5353, prompting my earlier comments about mDNS interferences, which I marked as unrelated.

[Grady]

Yeah, I believe the only remaining issue is why this seems to be true:

@Bucking_Horn

Your Pi-hole's Query Log shows that Pi-hole sees DNS requests and does not block them.

I do really, really appreciate everyone's help in this thread. I've learned a lot and a lot has been resolved.

[MichaIng]

Right, with Unbound on port 5335 there is no issue.

Just for completeness:

• Homebridge indeed comes with its internal mDNS service enabled by default, which is this "Bonjour-HAP" option listed in their wiki.
• One can install and run Avahi-Daemon concurrently just fine, but I would assume mentioned issues. Although, those services broadcast DNS info and do not receive them, so probably this "listening on UDP port 5353" is actually a bit misleading and it is not an issue when two services both broadcast different hostnames for the same host via mDNS? Or do I misunderstand the concept?
• However, in Homebridge settings one can just switch from "Bonjour-HAP" to "Avahi" to have it using the Avahi-Daemon instead. Or it can be switched manually in /var/lib/homebridge/config.json => "advertiser": "avahi".

[Bucking_Horn]

@Grady

The problem with starting a new topic is this thread has the historical steps taken and any new topic would need to reference this one to fully understand why we are where we are.

While clearing up your configuration has been useful, most of those steps seem irrelevant, as neither mDNS (as a protocol completely separate from DNS) nor unbound (as Pi-hole's upstream) do have an impact on Pi-hole's filtering.

Those sidesteps have been useful, but they put up quite some resistance when trying to get at your current issue.

@Grady

It's really just the last 10 or so posts that outline the current issue

The last ~10 posts have been about mDNS and the homebridge service, and in the ~10 before that, you've been discussing DHCP reservations, and in the ~10 before that, a legit DNS request for dummy, and before that, its mDNS again...

It would probably take roughly half an hour to read through and take in some 130 posts.

In an effort to refocus posts discussing separate issues, I've begun trying to split posts into separate topics that would allow to find and mark separate solutions, but I'm running out of time now (will continue next session).

[Grady]

@Bucking_Horn

a legit DNS request for dummy

Before we move beyond this one, may I ask for some understanding on what this dummy entry is/means and why is it legit? It seems to be something I can't account for when it shows up in the query log. And I've tried Google'ing this to no end and haven't seen anything that helps explain what this is/means.

Thank you again for all of your help with all of this. I know you all volunteer your time and it's invaluable. Thank you.

[Bucking_Horn]

@Grady

Before we move beyond this one, may I ask for some understanding on what this dummy entry is/means and why is it legit? It seems to be something I can't account for when it shows up in the query log.

deHakkelaar has answered that:

@deHakkelaar

Its the TV thats querying that dummy name.
Pi-hole just tries to forward it to see if gets resolved to an IP.

@deHakkelaar

NXDOMAIN = Non Existent Domain.

@deHakkelaar

Its your router 192.168.1.1 replying with NXDOMAIN and Pi-hole relaying the answer to your client.