Using Netgear Nighthawk ac1900 R7000 router with OpenDNS parental controls plus Pi-Hole

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Hi. This is a pre-setup question.

My Netgear Nighthawk R7000 router has recently changed its firmware such that the OpenDNS is no longer an account that I direct it to using my login credentials but a simple on/off switch in the Parental Controls area. I have no details on how it is set up, but I no longer seem to need to sign in with my account.

My DNS Server is set up for a range that was taken from my original OpenDNS account when I had to do it manually.

Question: If I set up Pi-Hole on a Rapsberry Pi and create a static IP address, which I then put in as the DNS server, thus erasing the OpenDNS IP range that is already in there, will the OpenDNS filtering still be happening probably, or is there something else I have to do?

My goal is to have OpenDNS for content filtering at all times but Pi-Hole for ad blocking.

Thanks.

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All you have to do is set-up the raspbery pi with the OpenDNS upstream DNS servers:

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I don't think that R7000 can push the DNS server to it's DHCP LAN clients but you could set-up the IP of the pi-hole under your Basic/Internet Settings:

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The one thing to keep in mind. if you set-up a secondary DNS there (even the OpenDNS one) some queries might go out via that secondary DNS and thus miss the Pi-hole.

What I would recommend (and that's how I have it set-up) is to use the Pi-hole as your DHCP server with OpenDNS as your upstream (and disable the one on your netgear).

You will get to see each client what accesses what under the query log in your Pi-hole admin interface.

If you use the DNS in your router (see above pic) than all your queries will look like they are coming from the router (in the Query log).

You could use ddclient also for OpenDNS auto update for the IP.

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OK, that is helpful. I'm still unsure whether the one-button OpenDNS filtering option under Parental Controls will have any effect once I set the DNS to Pi-Hole, but I can easily turn it on/off to test.

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You should disable it because it will interfere with the overall network ad-blocking performance.

And disable circle too if you use it.

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Thanks. I did select OpenDNS when I set up Pi-Hole, although I marked both IPv4 and IPv6. If that was a mistake, please advise. Otherwise, I will move on.

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That's fine. During setup you can select only the IPV4 version on the server and later on it will ask you if you want pi-hole to block ads over IPV4 and IPV6.

If you want to use the IPV6 version (alongside the IPV4) of OpenDNS, you have to select them manually once Pi-hole is installed from underneath Settings/DNS

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