Why can't I connect to the Internet when I enable Pi-hole?

[jacob.salmela]

Assuming you are configuring Pi-hole via your router or Pi-hole's built in DHCP server it may be one of several things.

1. Rebind Protection

Why won't Pi-hole work with DNS rebind protection enabled?

What is DNS rebind protection? If your router has an option called DNS rebind protection enabled, you may run into issues when trying to use Pi-hole as your DNS server. The reasons for this are quite technical, but to summarize what this option does in one sentence: DNS rebind protection does not allow DNS queries to be answered with a local IP address. Why does this interfere with Pi-hole? DNS rebind is meant to be a countermeasure to an attack on your network. So in many cases, it's ac…

You just need to disable it to make it work. Only some routers are affected.

2. Another common mistake we see if people setting Pi-hole as their WAN DNS server, which will cut off Internet since Pi-hole isn't an authoritative DNS server. You need to instead set this under the LAN DNS server, or in the DHCP options section.

3. If your gateway on your Pi-hole is not configured correctly, you cannot get out to the Internet. Since all devices query the Pi-hole, it needs to be able to reach the Internet to find upstream servers, but if it can't get out through the default gateway, the Internet will appear to be offline