Zaproid

Perhaps I have a fundamental misunderstanding of how VPNs work then. I know you cannot hide your dns requests. But what I thought was happening when running a VPN was that you first use the VPN's DNS, then any upstream DNS you need to connect to see the IP Address of the VPN, not your computer's personal IP Address. Making you more private/not immediately personally identifiable. If I am running just a PiHole, I connect with my computer's IP Address to the PiHole DNS. Then any additional upstream DNS would still see my computer's IP Address asking them for info. I thought it might be possible to first use the PiHole DNS, then "connect" to my VPN so all upstream traffic isn't identified with me. the PiHole DNS will know it is me know matter what. I am concerned about post that. I could be completely off the mark with my thoughts here though. Edit: Would it be possible to set upstream DNS to my VPN provider do you know? That seems like it would fix what I am looking for.

Apologies for the ignorance but what exactly is that last sentence saying? I know I can change my VPN to run a different DNS over their own one, and this would be what I do for the pihole. But my question still remains as to if the vpn then does anything beneficial. I am wondering if it still encrypts my traffic after using a different dns? I also have looked more into dns over https and I see that as an option. But I would prefer to keep my vpn operational if possible. As I trust my vpn provider and would still like to hide my requests from Cloudflare, which I don't think wouldn't be possible using DOH.

My goal with the VPN is to hide my traffic from my ISP. I am right now putting my dns requests over a vpn, but if I got a PiHole then that would function as my DNS. Which then I dont know if my VPN does anything at that point.

I do not have the PiHole set up yet actually. I was trying to gather information first beforehand but if it depends on the VPN configuration I'll run with it then. What exactly do you mean by a dns hit? If I just search something with the VPN DNS being the PiHole how would that show me if it is encrypted while traveling post PiHole?

Hello, I am fairly new to networking and am struggling to understand exactly how VPNs and DNS interact. I am currently running Mullvad VPN from my computer. I want to set up a PiHole for my entire network. From my understanding I will be changing my router's DNS to be the PiHole so it can function as a DNS-level adblocker. My understanding of the VPN is that through using the VPN provider's DNS my ISP does not see my queries and my traffic is encrypted. If I wanted to use both my VPN and a PiHole I can manually change the DNS for the VPN to be my PiHole DNS. My confusion then arises from how the VPN would interact with the PiHole as my DNS. Will the VPN encrypt my traffic after the PiHole DNS as it travels to other upstream DNS and eventually wherever I am trying to reach? Or will my VPN now be worthless as my traffic would not be encrypted and my ISP and all other upstream DNS would see it?