Pihole and Virgin Media Routers

[bupe]

Hi folks, 

First time poster here. 

Has anyone here got any experience configuring Pihole alongside a Virgin Router? More specifically a Hub 3 router. I know Virgin Customers ability to modify significant settings within the Admin Panel is pretty restrictive. 

From what I know so far, it's required to disable Virgins inbuilt DHCP settings. Besides that though is there any thing else I should be concerned about? 

More Pihole documentation can be found HERE. 

I look forward to your responses.

[Roger_Gooner]

If you put the hub into modem mode its DHCP server will be disabled.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

pihole is not a router. Its a DSN blackhole

[Tudor · Accepted solution]

I use pi-hole with great success, but I have my own Ubiquiti router. As far as I know it would be extremely difficult to run pi-hole with a Hub3. Essentially you need to point the DHCP server to give out the address of the Pi that is running pi-hole for the DNS server, but the Hub3 does not allow you to change or set your own DNS server.  It may be possible to turn off the DHCP server on the Hub3 and use the Pi as a DHCP server as well as a DNS server.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

the pihole can be the dhcp i would try and then off the dhcp on the hub

Death to ads 🙂

[bupe]

I'm sure you can disable DHCP through Virgins Hub 3 Router settings without the need of putting the router into Modem mode. If I was to do that, wouldn't I need to purchase an additional Router and/or an Access Point? I'm pretty sure I would.. but I could be wrong?

This link seemed to come in handy: https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/how-do-i-use-pi-holes-built-in-dhcp-server-and-why-would-i-want-to/3...

[bupe]

From what I gather I can statically set the IP in Raspbian for the Pi itself. That will assign the IP to the NIC on the Pi.

You then just disable the routers DHCP and enable Pi-holes built in DHCP Server.

This is all in theory though. I'm planning on implementing everything later today. I'll update this post later and let you know how I get on! Wish me luck! 😅

[Tudor]

Sounds like it should work. I’m currently looking at running two Pi-holes for redundancy sake.

[bupe]

I've not had the time to play around with Pihole today. It looks like this'll be another job for tomorrow. 

Two independent Pi-hole's sounds like a clever idea. You could set up two independent Pi-hole’s and (two distinct devices in the same network) and set up those two IPs as “primary” and “secondary” servers. All devices should be able to resolve domains even if one of them fails for some reason. The costs of an extra device should perfectly balance with the extra reassurance!

[bupe]

Just a quick update. After some difficulty, I managed to get the Pi up and running. On my first attempts, each time I enabled Piholes DHCP Server and disabled the Routers (Hub 3.0) DHCP service, I'd lose all connectivity. No new dynamic IP leases were being issued. 

It seemed the only workaround was keeping the Routers DHCP Service Enabled but restricting its DHCP Range to 1 IP. That IP is that of the Static IP issued to the Raspberry Pi. This workaround isn't perfect as there is limited DHCP Lease Time of 604800 seconds set by Virgin. 

Does anyone know if there's anything I may have been doing wrong? Has anyone else got Pihole up and running correctly without this workaround?