DaveL17 wrote:I've been thinking about this problem from the standpoint of WAF damage points.
Why not set the preferred DNS to 10.0.1.123 (the piHole) *and* also set one for 10.0.1.1 (or whatever the default DNS is)? Then the client would first attempt to use the piHole and if that didn't respond, wouldn't it then fall back to the default and motor happily along? This, of course, presumes that you want the client to connect in "ad space" if the piHole was down.
I think you are responding to me here Dave, though I'm not completely sure. If not, feel free to disregard.
Your solution might be worth trying. But I think what would happen is, the content blocked by the pi-hole would get loaded by the secondary DNS server, thereby defeating the purpose.
Running it through Indigo was a perfect solution, because it gave a dead simple way to disable it when it was interfering with browsing, etc. (strangely, that never happens to me-- I guess I don't frequent the tracking required sites). Basically the plugin allowed the WAF to go high enough for me to get away with deploying it on our network. I made a nice little toggleable icon on the main home Indigo dashboard that was easy to press if someone needed it off. Even had it turn back on every midnight if someone forgot to turn it back on.
The kids even loved it because it radically cut down on ad clutter in iOS games as well. But unfortunately, the connection to Indigo was one of the things that seemed to fail when it locks up (the other was my ability to easily SSH in to the pi, as well as the browser based dashboard). Oddly, it keeps right on blocking mostly unperturbed, though I think it might over-block a little in thast circumstance.
I've been testing some options for the past week or so by putting the home router back to "regular" DNS servers, but I changed my phone (and only my phone) to the pi-hole-- you can do that for individual wifi connections in iOS. It has been working fine, which kinda makes me wonder if it's a volume problem-- that is, if the pi is hit with too many requests from a busy, very connected house, does it get overwhelmed or something?
I've seen a few comments online that a weak spot on the pi's may be the microSD card. I'm pretty sure I set this one up with a high quality card, but it might be worthwhile to see if redoing it with a different card might help.
Thanks for the suggestions.