I'm setting up my basic Tenda router to connect with Pi-hole for a network-wide approach.
I'm setting up my basic Tenda router to connect with Pi-hole for a network-wide approach.
Hey everyone, just installed Pi Hole on my Raspberry Pi 3 and wanted to use Pihole with a custom DNS for my DHCP clients. But when I tried from the router settings, the connection for my RPi3 stopped working. My basic Tenda router had internet issues affecting other devices before. What should I do?
Begin by confirming you’re running the most recent Raspberry Pi OS version. Since PiHole operates without a graphical interface, the lightweight edition works well—just issue commands via SSH or CLI. During initial configuration, assign your RPi a fixed LAN IP address, outside the DHCP range but within the same subnet. You can reserve this IP in your router by linking it to the MAC address of the eth0 interface (determine the MAC with `ifconfig eth0`). After logging into the OS, refresh package lists and upgrade all software to their latest versions. Once installed, setting up PiHole and configuring DNS will automatically reference that static IP. Using a DHCP address causes setup failures whenever the router renews the RPi’s IP. After customizing blocklists in PiHole, adjust your router’s DNS settings to point to your RPi’s LAN IP, ensuring consistent network-wide protection. Reboot both router and clients for changes to take effect. Or, restrict PiHole usage to particular devices by updating their LAN IP entries to point to PiHole’s IP address as their DNS server.