Pi-Hole DNS Sinkhold

[PizzaTacoCat]

Good Afternoon,

 

I plan on installing Pi-Hole on a raspberry pi and hooking it up to my router as the default DNS so it blocks ads on all sites and devices. All of the instructions say to connect it to your router via Ethernet however my router only has 2 Ethernet ports and both are being used. Would it be possible to connect the Pi to my router via wifi instead? I plan on getting the Pi-4 and don't want to lose an Ethernet port?

 

[Windows7ge]

I don't see a reason why you can't assuming it has drivers for the wireless NIC and you know how to connect.

 

Really though the easy solution is to buy a network switch. Consumer switches can be picked up really cheaply.

[TheBean]

you would need a switch. just be carefull when setting up the ip address for the dns. 

if you can afford it, just buy a newer better router. if you still have your ISP provided one, you will get much better performance with a new one. you might even save money if your isp charges rental fees for a router.

[Falcon1986]

I agree with getting a dedicated (unmanaged) gigabit switch. A wired gigabit switch will provide a much more reliable connection than WiFi. And if this PiHole device will be handling all the DNS requests on the network, you'll want something fast with the fewest interruptions.

 

Unmanaged gigabit switches are relatively inexpensive on Amazon. Just choose the number of ports you need and get it.

[beersykins]

Ideally a switch, but wifi should be fine.  DNS requests influence initial latency but the caching piece should offset any WiFi CSMA/CA, which isn't a major consideration to begin with in this use case.

[PizzaTacoCat]

20 hours ago, Falcon1986 said:

I agree with getting a dedicated (unmanaged) gigabit switch. A wired gigabit switch will provide a much more reliable connection than WiFi. And if this PiHole device will be handling all the DNS requests on the network, you'll want something fast with the fewest interruptions.

 

Unmanaged gigabit switches are relatively inexpensive on Amazon. Just choose the number of ports you need and get it.

I believe in order to use the Pi-Hole as the default DNS provider you need to have a static IP address. Would this cause issues using a switch? Or could I be completely wrong with that?

[mtz_federico]

51 minutes ago, PizzaTacoCat said:

I believe in order to use the Pi-Hole as the default DNS provider you need to have a static IP address. Would this cause issues using a switch? Or could I be completely wrong with that?

Yeah you need to give the raspberry pi a static ip, setting a static ip is the same with a switch than by connecting directly to the router.

[Falcon1986]

22 hours ago, PizzaTacoCat said:

I believe in order to use the Pi-Hole as the default DNS provider you need to have a static IP address. Would this cause issues using a switch? Or could I be completely wrong with that?

A network device labeled as a switch  doesn’t have any routing abilities. The routing will be handled by your router.

 

You are correct that your PiHole will need a static IP address if all of your client devices are to use it. This can be set at the router or PiHole level, the former of which I prefer since it is easier, but you might have limitations if the router doesn’t allow you to.

 

I also run a PiHole and UniFi Controller on my RPi. At my router (Edgerouter-X) I’ve set a static IP for the MAC address of the RPi so as soon as it boots up connected to my network it gets the same IP every time (this internal IP address is outside of the DHCP pool). I’ve also set the DNS server at the router level to reflect the static IP of the RPi. The benefit of this part is that I don’t have to set the DNS IP of each client device on the network unless if I specifically don’t want it to go through the PiHole.

[PizzaTacoCat]

On 3/11/2020 at 10:19 AM, Falcon1986 said:

A network device labeled as a switch  doesn’t have any routing abilities. The routing will be handled by your router.

 

You are correct that your PiHole will need a static IP address if all of your client devices are to use it. This can be set at the router or PiHole level, the former of which I prefer since it is easier, but you might have limitations if the router doesn’t allow you to.

 

I also run a PiHole and UniFi Controller on my RPi. At my router (Edgerouter-X) I’ve set a static IP for the MAC address of the RPi so as soon as it boots up connected to my network it gets the same IP every time (this internal IP address is outside of the DHCP pool). I’ve also set the DNS server at the router level to reflect the static IP of the RPi. The benefit of this part is that I don’t have to set the DNS IP of each client device on the network unless if I specifically don’t want it to go through the PiHole.

I don't know a lot about internet stuff so you kind of lost me there. Is there a video or something I could use on how to do it so I don't have to set the DNS IP of each client device on the network? Also would this work as a switch:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MU3GE5L?tag=price17562-20&ascsubtag=wtbs_5e6a70b1ed1fa9ea9dab6406&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER I want something good that could do gigabyte LAN and would be good for gaming and streaming on different devices. Or is this too overkill?

[Falcon1986]

13 minutes ago, PizzaTacoCat said:

I don't know a lot about internet stuff so you kind of lost me there. Is there a video or something I could use on how to do it so I don't have to set the DNS IP of each client device on the network? Also would this work as a switch:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MU3GE5L?tag=price17562-20&ascsubtag=wtbs_5e6a70b1ed1fa9ea9dab6406&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER I want something good that could do gigabyte LAN and would be good for gaming and streaming on different devices. Or is this too overkill?

That might be a little overkill. Unless you really need a managed switch with those features, go ahead. But a simple 8-port unmanaged gigabit switch such as this Netgear or TP-Link should be fine. And they cost way less!

 

When you get the RPi set up with PiHole, give it a dedicated static IP. Enter this same IP as the DNS server in your router's LAN settings.