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Vodafone Connect Router - Local DNS Setup

jamstruth
2: Seeker
2: Seeker

 

Trying to setup a local DNS server on my Vodafone Connect router. I'm setting up a local Pi-Hole DNS for ad-blocking, it works fine when set manually on a device but not through the router.

I currently have the Router set to 1.1.1.1 which seems to work perfectly fine but when I set my local DNS as the IP all devices fail to connect to any sites. I've tried various ways using a static IP address outside the range for the DHCP (192.168.1.XYZ)

Does anybody know of a way to set this up?

17 REPLIES 17

Anonymous
Not applicable

Hi

it should be as simple as changeing the DHCP settiing to send out the ip of the Pi-Hole for DNS requests, try dissabling DHCP on the vodaphone router and using the Pi-hole for DHCP.

 

Is this something you've done yourself?

I'm a bit nervous about setting this up as it seems like something I could easily get into a mess doing. Is it as simple as turning off DHCP through Vodafone Connect and enabling it on the Pi from a device with a manually configured IP or is there somewhere on the router I need to configure the new DHCP server for new devices?

I think the DHCP server on the router will always set itself as the DNS server, which acts as a forwarder forwarding all requests to the DNS server that you set up on the Internet tab.

 

To do what you want, I believe you need to disable the DHCP server on the router and run dnsmasq on the pi. You can then put in the dnsmasq configuration (the line starting server= in /etc/dnsmasq.conf) the DNS server you want to assign to the DHCP clients .

I just realised the Pi Hole is not a Respberry Pi, but what I said earlier would apply to any linux set up.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Regards DHCP and DNS:  A whole group of router functions get bundled into the DHCP server role, and it's not always completely clear what is involved.

 

You can turn the local host management of the DHCP server off entirely, but no matter what you do the router must still the be "gateway" (no way around this and various methods to circumvent it have been tried).

 

As for the DNS, you should be able to point the DNS lookup addresses to a local server using the Expert Mode> Internet> DNS & DDNS menus.  This will work, but it looks very much as if the router already keeps a cached DNS table of recently visited sites(see Gibson Research's DNS bench if you want to check this for yourself), so you may just be creating doubling up the cache if you are not careful.

 

Setting up DHCP on a Pi or other Linux machine is not difficult, but you need to think through all the consequences (such as reserving your routers address), and what the fall back will be should something stop working!  On the up side, you should be able to get DLNA working to industry standards, though UPnP will be a nightmare!

@Anonymous wrote:

As for the DNS, you should be able to point the DNS lookup addresses to a local server using the Expert Mode> Internet> DNS & DDNS menus.  This will work, but it looks very much as if the router already keeps a cached DNS table of recently visited sites(see Gibson Research's DNS bench if you want to check this for yourself), so you may just be creating doubling up the cache if you are not careful. 


I can assure you that this is not the case with this router. I currently have it set with 1.0.0.1 as a fallback DNS and none of my requests are going through the Pi-Hole Software, if I was to remove the 1.0.0.1 fallback then I would have no DNS whatsoever. The Vodafone Connect router is not working with the local DNS server. Looking at my PC's IP config output I can see that it is just using 192.168.1.1 (the router) as the DNS server indicating there is some forwarding or a cache on there which I'm guessing doens't like the idea of sending requests back into the network.

Anonymous
Not applicable

@jamstruth wrote:

Is this something you've done yourself?

I'm a bit nervous about setting this up as it seems like something I could easily get into a mess doing. Is it as simple as turning off DHCP through Vodafone Connect and enabling it on the Pi from a device with a manually configured IP or is there somewhere on the router I need to configure the new DHCP server for new devices?


Hi,

No as i dont use vodaphones router and the router i do use supports dns redirection.

 

read this step 5 https://blog.cryptoaustralia.org.au/2018/08/06/instructions-for-setting-up-pi-hole/

 

so the basics, say the router is using 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.254 currently 

 

so the address fo the router is 192.168.0.254 (this is also the gateway) set your pc to a static address, open a comand window and type ipconfig you are looking ofr the IPV4 address, for example 192.168.0.10 the gateway will be 192.168.0.254 and the dns may be the same, make a note of the address and staticly assign the pc.

 

this may help https://kb.netgear.com/27476/How-to-set-a-static-IP-address-in-Windows

 

now you have a static ip adress logon to the router dissable DHCP, check the DHCP scope (rannge) and then logon to the Pi-Hole and enable DHCP server and ensure the range is the same as the Voda router. for example 192.168.0.100 - 192.168.0.240 and set the gateway to the routers address.

 

now set PCs Ip back to odtain a ip adress automaticly, you shold now reboot the pc or open a command window and type ipconfig /release and the ipconfig /flushdns

 

you should now be using the Pi_hole 🙂 any isseus work in reverse

 

Sorry about the spelling 🙂 hopefull you should get the idea

Anonymous
Not applicable

The other thing for Jams would be to try running a packet sniffer on your own network to see what's hapening when you attempt to redirect the DNS to the Pi-hole.  This works on OpenMediaVault, so there should be no reason it won't work properly if Pi-hole is set up correctly!

Ubermacht
3: Seeker
3: Seeker

Hi

I've got the exact same issue, pi hole appears to be set up and working but when I change my dns settings on router it blocks Internet on the whole network. I have tried using the pi hole as dhcp server but pi hole then comes up with a dns error. I tried changing the firewall settings but no change. I think I agree with the OP that there seems to be an issue with the router not liking the dns settings being one inside the network. Was anyone able to find a fix at all?

I'm using pi hole on my pc as a docker repository, I've watched a few tutorials online (using net gear routers) and there doesn't seem to be an issue, maybe time to try a new router?

Thanks in advance