Yes, you can use PiHole with a PlusNet Hub One router without changing DNS

[#1]

I had a plan to set up a Raspberry Pi running PiHole so that I could block ads on a network level.

Unfortunately, the normal setup guides to PiHole tell you to change your router's DNS settings so that all devices on your network will send their DNS queries to the Raspberry Pi, which will in turn then block some of them using block lists and send the rest to your choice of DNS provider. I got to the point of having PiHole all set up when I realized there was no way to change the DNS settings on my PlusNet Hub One Router. 

I checked these forums yesterday and it seems like quite a few people have had the same problem. I almost ran out and bought a BT business router to replace the Hub One so I could change the DNS.

But then I did some reading and realized that if you just turn on the DHCP service on PiHole and disable DHCP on the Hub One Router, then everything on your network will go to the Raspberry Pi for its IP address and at the same time will be told to use it for DNS queries. This actually gives you a better solution than just changing the DNS server because PiHole then knows which client is making which query, handy if you're trying to work out which PC is infected with malware or whatever. I have it running now and it works great: TV, phones, PCs, all working.

If you want to do it yourself, the steps are these:

1. Get a Raspberry Pi (I bought a Pi 4, 2GB RAM - yes, 2GB is plenty, it's currently using 4% of that)

2. Install PiHole (I used this guide: https://www.smarthomebeginner.com/pi-hole-setup-guide/)

3. Connect to PiHole, go into Settings, go to the DHCP tab.

3a. Tick the box marked "DHCP server enabled"

3b. Set the Router (Gateway) IP address to the address of your router

3c. Make sure you save your changes

4. Connect to your Hub One Router.

4a. Go to Advanced Settings, then IP Addresses

4b. Change DHCP Server: Enable from Yes to No

4c. Click "Apply."

Turn off one of your computers and turn it on again. Go to PiHole's Network page and you should be able to see that it's now connected and getting its IP address from PiHole. Go to the queries page and you should see queries start to appear from it (if you don't, go to a website you've never been to before, or flush your DNS cache).

Hope that helps somebody

[#2]

@CuriousVole - out of interest, how 'hot' does the CPU run on the Raspberry Pi?  I've got a Pi2, Pi W and Pi3 lying around, and I'd prefer to utilise the oldest one capable of running the tool well

[#3]

Using a Raspberry Pi 4 2GB running just Pi-hole:

54.5 degrees centigrade.

Load: 0.1 0.03 0.01

Memory usage: 4.9%

So I'm guessing an older Pi would run it just fine

[#4]

This from a Pi 3b in DHCP mode, that's also running a couple of Webmail servers, a monitoring server and a handful of custom scripts:-

Active Temp: 50.5 °C
Load:  0.06  0.09  0.12
Memory usage:  36.3 %

It's also running its own instance of Unbound for local DNS resolution/caching.

Fairly certain I ran Pihole on a first gen Pi 1 Model B+ previously.

Comes thoroughly recommended.

[#5]

@AndyHerb 

Currently running PiHole on a PiZero with DietPi

 Active Temp: 35.8 °C
 Load:  0.03  0.08  0.12
 Memory usage:  8.4 %

Powered directly from hub USB port , which makes for a nice 2 cable (USB power & network via Ethernet adapter) installation.

[#6]

@CuriousVole Not sure what I am doing wrong. I set the router IP in Pi-Hole settings to 192.168.1.254, disabled 'DHCP Server' on Hub One, and restarted the router. Now, the two PCs and the RPi 4B, all connected to the router through ethernet work exactly as before, Pi-Hole doesn't show any LAN or blocking activity, and all mobile devices report 'IP configuration failure'.

Also, the 'Home Network - Devices' and 'DHCP Table' admin screens on the router are now blank but this may be OK. If it is, I don't see how we can fix the local IP address of a device (as we had to do with the RPi so that it doesn't change after a reboot).

Any ideas please?

[#7]

False alarm. It was the stupid firewall again. I opened port 53 and it's working now, although it sees all clients as android_something. I saw somewhere port 80 should be opened too but it seems it's working OK without it.

[#8]

@glocal Yay, glad you got it working

If you want to be able to better see which device is doing what, you can assign static IP addresses to each android device on PiHole's DHCP page - that way, you can give them names. 

[#9]

@CuriousVole 

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@CuriousVole wrote:

If you want to be able to better see which device is doing what, you can assign static IP addresses to each android device on PiHole's DHCP page - that way, you can give them names. 

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Fantastic. I was looking for precisely this earlier today and I gave up.

In case it helps, dnscrypt-proxy-pihole automates setting up encrypted Cloudflare DNS.

[#10]

Yes, round mine I use Branson Media as Fibre wasn't available when I moved into mine. It is now, so the PlusNet connection is my sisters. 10 minute bus journey, or a 40 minute walk if I am feeling energetic (read that as hardly ever).

Oh well, got something to pick up at Argos tomorrow, so I will pop there. I know where the pub is, so purely in the interest of science I may have to perform some quality control testing on their beer.

Sorry a bit back on topic, I just set my DHCP to issue addresses after 192.168.0.20 (Branson media use the .0 subnet and not the .1, I can't be bothered to change it). I just set my colour laser printer to have it's own IP as it is a pain if on DHCP and the router dishes it out a new IP address.

This may have changed now, so I just give the printer a fixed IP (outside DHCP) so it won't complain when I try and print.