DNS on LAN and not internet

[DanologyUK]

I have recently set up a PiHole but when i look in the logs on the PiHole it shows clients IP as my router IP address. I can only find 1 place to change the DNS on the router under INTERNET SETUP but looking online the instructions are for the DNS to be set on LAN. 

Would someone be able to advise where I am going wrong so i can get PIHole to report my individual client IPs only?

[Netduma Fraser]

Which router do you have? Profile says you own the R1 but you've posted in the Nighthawk section. Either way there is no way to set up specific LAN DNS. If you're on one of the XR router Dynamic DNS may help but not sure on that.

[DanologyUK]

19 minutes ago, Netduma Fraser said:

Which router do you have? Profile says you own the R1 but you've posted in the Nighthawk section. Either way there is no way to set up specific LAN DNS. If you're on one of the XR router Dynamic DNS may help but not sure on that.

Oops sorry ive got Xr500. I did see the Dynamic DNS section but didnt know how that works. 

[Netduma Fraser]

Actually forget that, in Internet Setup, click 'Use these DNS Servers', then put your PiHole IP as the first one then use a different one for the second e.g. 1.1.1.1, 8.8.8.8 or ISP default. Does that work?

[DanologyUK]

1 hour ago, Netduma Fraser said:

Actually forget that, in Internet Setup, click 'Use these DNS Servers', then put your PiHole IP as the first one then use a different one for the second e.g. 1.1.1.1, 8.8.8.8 or ISP default. Does that work?

Thats how i have it now but it doesnt work. It still sees all traffic through the router IP

[Netduma Fraser]

It will always show as going to the router first because that is where it is getting the DNS information from.

[DanologyUK]

14 minutes ago, Netduma Fraser said:

It will always show as going to the router first because that is where it is getting the DNS information from.

I have found some information but without knowing the technicalities of how the Netduma OS software operates, could this be a potential reason? The only way i have potentially found is for the PiHole to be my DHCP server as well but im not sure how this affect everything else on the router (QOS / Geo filtering etc)

 

So why does Pi-hole only show my router’s IP address?

This behavior is usually the result of how your router handles DHCP and DNS.

1. Some routers force clients to use the router as their DNS server

Even if you set Pi-hole as the only DNS server in your router’s settings, the router still forces clients to use it as their primary DNS resolver.

Once those queries arrive at the router, it forwards the requests to the Pi-hole. Since the queries are all coming from one place, Pi-hole only sees the router as the origin of all DNS requests. So the traffic flow looks something like this:

Multiple network clients > Router (acting as the primary DNS server) > Pi-hole (acting as an upstream DNS server)

[Netduma Fraser]

Unfortunately you can't set it up as a DHCP server through the router. A few people have tried to set up PiHoles with the router and what I mentioned above was all that is possible at this moment. Yes that is entirely possible, DHCP on the router was done by Netgear so I couldn't say how they've implemented that.