xr500 XR500 forcing all devices to use router as DNS resolver

[skarz]

Hello all,

I recently installed Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi to use as a local DNS resolver and ad blocker. Normally, in the Pi-hole logs you will see activity broken down by local IP of device (see attachment).  With the XR500 all DNS requests are coming through 192.168.1.1 which according to Pi-hole documentation, is potentially the fault of the router. Does anyone know how I can change this?

Thanks!

[Netduma Fraser]

You've done all you can on the router interface to try and get it to work that way. If seeing the individual devices is important to you then you could try using the Pi-hole as the DHCP server instead which is mentioned at the bottom of the link. Unfortunately there is nothing you can change make it force devices to use the Pi-hole DNS first.

[DanologyUK]

On 11/19/2020 at 2:23 AM, skarz said:

Hello all,

I recently installed Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi to use as a local DNS resolver and ad blocker. Normally, in the Pi-hole logs you will see activity broken down by local IP of device (see attachment).  With the XR500 all DNS requests are coming through 192.168.1.1 which according to Pi-hole documentation, is potentially the fault of the router. Does anyone know how I can change this?

Thanks!

You can manually set your device names in Pi-Hole under the section called "Local DNS Records"

[skarz]

On 11/20/2020 at 4:40 AM, DanologyUK said:

You can manually set your device names in Pi-Hole under the section called "Local DNS Records"

That is incorrect. This page is just a GUI for /etc/hosts basically.

[skarz]

On 11/19/2020 at 4:57 AM, Netduma Fraser said:

You've done all you can on the router interface to try and get it to work that way. If seeing the individual devices is important to you then you could try using the Pi-hole as the DHCP server instead which is mentioned at the bottom of the link. Unfortunately there is nothing you can change make it force devices to use the Pi-hole DNS first.

Is there a workaround for this? The XR500 is the only router I've ever owned that does this...

[Netduma Fraser]

15 hours ago, skarz said:

Is there a workaround for this? The XR500 is the only router I've ever owned that does this...

There is no workaround that I am aware of unfortunately. Perhaps if you're able to connect it upstream of the XR then that could work.

[DanologyUK]

On 1/18/2021 at 11:13 PM, skarz said:

That is incorrect. This page is just a GUI for /etc/hosts basically.

Isnt that what you are trying to achieve though?

I can see all my hostnames (which i have set in this)

[skarz]

On 2/9/2021 at 12:34 AM, DanologyUK said:

Isnt that what you are trying to achieve though?

I can see all my hostnames (which i have set in this)

I'm not sure how you got this to work properly, as the only IP address my Pi Hole sees is my router's IP as all DNS queries are sent through my router first. It's a purposeful Netgear feature called DNS relay.

[DanologyUK]

33 minutes ago, skarz said:

I'm not sure how you got this to work properly, as the only IP address my Pi Hole sees is my router's IP as all DNS queries are sent through my router first. It's a purposeful Netgear feature called DNS relay.

To get it to work, you will also need to set the DNS on each of the devices to your PI Hole IP Address. 

[skarz]

Unfortunately that's not possible on 90% of my connected devices - smart TVs, WiFi cameras, printer, etc.

[skarz]

What are the chances of 'DNS relay' being an optional feature in the future?

[Netduma Liam]

6 hours ago, skarz said:

What are the chances of 'DNS relay' being an optional feature in the future?

Could you clarify what you mean exactly and what the use case would be for this? I'll add it to the roadmap in case it's not already there.