Pi-Hole Discussion Thread

[Jurong640]

from the domain,

it looks like, Over-The-Air (OTA) update service?

sounds like it. But it happens lots of times, every few seconds

Time	Type	Domain	Status	Reply	Action
2025-02-18 15:00:57	AAAA	ota.onecloud.harman.com	Blocked (exact blacklist)	IP (0.1ms)	Whitelist
2025-02-18 15:00:57	A	ota.onecloud.harman.com	Blocked (exact blacklist)	IP (0.1ms)	Whitelist
2025-02-18 15:00:46	AAAA	ota.onecloud.harman.com	Blocked (exact blacklist)	IP (0.1ms)	Whitelist
2025-02-18 15:00:46	A	ota.onecloud.harman.com	Blocked (exact blacklist)	IP (0.0ms)	Whitelist
2025-02-18 15:00:34	AAAA	ota.onecloud.harman.com	Blocked (exact blacklist)	IP (0.0ms)	Whitelist
2025-02-18 15:00:34	A	ota.onecloud.harman.com	Blocked (exact blacklist)	IP (0.0ms)	Whitelist
2025-02-18 15:00:23	AAAA	ota.onecloud.harman.com	Blocked (exact blacklist)	IP (0.1ms)

 

[Jurong640]

Another insight from my pi-hole over the day

2025-02-18 09:49:19	A	eu-teams.events.data.microsoft.com	x	Blocked (gravity)	IP (2.4ms)	Whitelist
2025-02-18 09:49:19	AAAA	eu-teams.events.data.microsoft.com	x	Blocked (gravity)	IP (2.4ms)	Whitelist
2025-02-18 09:49:14	AAAA	eu-teams.events.data.microsoft.com	x	Blocked (gravity)	IP (2.4ms)	Whitelist
2025-02-18 09:49:14	A	eu-teams.events.data.microsoft.com	x	Blocked (gravity)	IP (2.5ms)	Whitelist
2025-02-18 09:49:06	AAAA	eu-teams.events.data.microsoft.com	x	Blocked (gravity)	IP (2.4ms)	Whitelist
2025-02-18 09:49:06	A	eu-teams.events.data.microsoft.com	x	Blocked (gravity)	IP (2.4ms)	Whitelist
2025-02-18 09:48:59	A	eu-teams.events.data.microsoft.com	x	Blocked (gravity)	IP (2.4ms)	Whitelist
2025-02-18 09:48:59	AAAA	eu-teams.events.data.microsoft.com	x	Blocked (gravity)	IP (2.4ms)	Whitelist
2025-02-18 09:48:54	AAAA	eu-teams.events.data.microsoft.com	x	Blocked (gravity)	IP (2.3ms)	Whitelist
2025-02-18 09:48:54	A	eu-teams.events.data.microsoft.com	x	Blocked (gravity)	IP (2.4ms)	Whitelist
2025-02-18 09:48:46	AAAA	eu-teams.events.data.microsoft.com	x	Blocked (gravity)	IP (2.4ms)	Whitelist
2025-02-18 09:48:46	A	eu-teams.events.data.microsoft.com	x	Blocked (gravity)	IP (2.4ms)

• eu: This clearly indicates Europe. Microsoft often uses region-specific subdomains to handle data locality and compliance with regulations like GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in the European Union. This suggests the data being sent to this domain is likely related to users in Europe or European data centers.
• teams: This almost certainly refers to Microsoft Teams, the collaboration and communication platform (similar to Slack or Zoom).
• events: This strongly suggests that the domain is related to event tracking or telemetry data. "Events" in this context usually mean user actions within the Teams application or system events generated by Teams.
• data: This reinforces the idea that it's a domain for sending data – likely telemetry, usage data, and potentially diagnostic information.
• microsoft.com: This confirms it's a Microsoft domain.

Reasons to KEEP it Blocked:

• Privacy: If you are very privacy-focused and want to minimize the amount of telemetry data Microsoft (or any company) collects about your Teams usage, blocking this domain will likely reduce that data collection.
• Reduced Network Traffic (Potentially Minor): Blocking telemetry can slightly reduce network traffic, although the impact is usually minimal.
• Less Data Sent: You are preventing some data about your Teams usage from being sent to Microsoft.

---

I don't remember having MS Teams on my computer.

 

[Jurong640]

Anyone here route their DNS queries on their mobile phones when outside to their home pi-hole?

What is the most effective way of doing it and is there any downside? Like latency will go up?

 

[phayze]

Anyone here route their DNS queries on their mobile phones when outside to their home pi-hole?

What is the most effective way of doing it and is there any downside? Like latency will go up?

I have been using google dns on mobile phone, so far cant feel any difference. If your pi-hole have a public ip, you can set DNS using that IP.

 

[Jurong640]

I have been using google dns on mobile phone, so far cant feel any difference. If your pi-hole have a public ip, you can set DNS using that IP.

Thanks. Currently when outside, I manually switch my DNS to ad-guard DNS. Currently, it is doing its job to block ads, but was thinking if it's better to route it to my pi-hole for better security, blocking filtering of malware, trackers and lastly ads.

 

[ShrmnK]

You need to VPN back home to securely connect to your pihole. Definitely don’t expose your pihole to the world by opening port 53. Recommend checking out https://tailscale.com/kb/1114/pi-hole

High level steps using Tailscale:

1. Expose pihole to Tailscale as its own device

2. Set the pihole addresses ipv4 and ipv6 as the tailnet’s DNS address

3. Enable the Override local DNS

4. Connect mobile device to tailnet


bonus: use MagicDNS and Tailscale cert to provision certificate for your pihole admin UI!

 

[Jurong640]

You need to VPN back home to securely connect to your pihole. Definitely don’t expose your pihole to the world by opening port 53. Recommend checking out https://tailscale.com/kb/1114/pi-hole

High level steps using Tailscale:

1. Expose pihole to Tailscale as its own device

2. Set the pihole addresses ipv4 and ipv6 as the tailnet’s DNS address

3. Enable the Override local DNS

4. Connect mobile device to tailnet


bonus: use MagicDNS and Tailscale cert to provision certificate for your pihole admin UI!

thank you

 

[ShrmnK]

thank you

No problem feel free to ask questions if you need help! I use this daily on all my devices.
(FYI for those new to tailscale, you don't need to enable exit node for this to work! it will basically split tunnel only sending data destined for your tailnet over the VPN, including in this case your DNS queries, but not everything else)

 

[Jurong640]

Pi Hole has launched v6. Anyone updated yet?
I saw reddit some had commented, the CPU load, and temperature is gone. New features include, allowed list instead of whitelisting blocklist

 

[ShrmnK]

Pi Hole has launched v6. Anyone updated yet?
I saw reddit some had commented, the CPU load, and temperature is gone. New features include, allowed list instead of whitelisting blocklist

I'm on v6! Never really looked at those cpu metrics anyway

 

[Jurong640]

I'm on v6! Never really looked at those cpu metrics anyway

i see. Any difference in v6?

Metrics probably to see the temps, mine hovers around 41 to 43 degrees

 

[Jurong640]

Updated to v6 just now.
After updating to v6, took me a few hours to troubleshoot as my wifi clients cannot connect to wifi, but my ethernet client (my computer) is able to access the internet.

Tried resetting my router (TPLink BE805), and restore back to backup settings, and remains the same. End up, after a few hours of troubleshooting, the problem lies with my pi-hole upstream DNS. The upstream DNS settings was not migrated to v6. I have to manually check my ipv4 and ipv6 DNS server. That's when my internet was restored.

What upstream DNS server are you all using for IPv4 and IPv6?

 

[xiaofan]

Updated to v6 just now.
After updating to v6, took me a few hours to troubleshoot as my wifi clients cannot connect to wifi, but my ethernet client (my computer) is able to access the internet.

Tried resetting my router (TPLink BE805), and restore back to backup settings, and remains the same. End up, after a few hours of troubleshooting, the problem lies with my pi-hole upstream DNS. The upstream DNS settings was not migrated to v6. I have to manually check my ipv4 and ipv6 DNS server. That's when my internet was restored.

What upstream DNS server are you all using for IPv4 and IPv6?

As mentioned earlier I usually use Cloudflare Family DNS and Quad 9. They are both filtering DNS and support both IPv4 and IPv6.

For non-filtering DNS, Google DNS and Cloudflare DNS are probably the most popular ones. They support both IPv4 and IPv6.

 

[Jurong640]

As mentioned earlier I usually use Cloudflare Family DNS and Quad 9. They are both filtering DNS and support both IPv4 and IPv6.

For non-filtering DNS, Google DNS and Cloudflare DNS are probably the most popular ones. They support both IPv4 and IPv6.

Thank you. Just now I also changed to cloudflare DNS and Quad 9.

Pardon for asking and I'm still learning. There are 2 options for each IPv4 and IPv6, does the 2 options means a secondary DNS upstream?

Meaning I can put Cloudflare as first, and Quad and second checkbox?

 

[xiaofan]

Thank you. Just now I also changed to cloudflare DNS and Quad 9.

Pardon for asking and I'm still learning. There are 2 options for each IPv4 and IPv6, does the 2 options means a secondary DNS upstream?

Meaning I can put Cloudflare as first, and Quad and second checkbox?

Yes, you can use multiple upstream DNS providers.

 

[sgcarousell]

Updated to v6 just now.
After updating to v6, took me a few hours to troubleshoot as my wifi clients cannot connect to wifi, but my ethernet client (my computer) is able to access the internet.

Tried resetting my router (TPLink BE805), and restore back to backup settings, and remains the same. End up, after a few hours of troubleshooting, the problem lies with my pi-hole upstream DNS. The upstream DNS settings was not migrated to v6. I have to manually check my ipv4 and ipv6 DNS server. That's when my internet was restored.

What upstream DNS server are you all using for IPv4 and IPv6?

U can install unbound on the same machine and run it as ur dns resolver too

 

[Jurong640]

U can install unbound on the same machine and run it as ur dns resolver too

How is unbound, is it better than other dns severs like quad and cloudflare?

 

[xiaofan]

How is unbound, is it better than other dns severs like quad and cloudflare?

You can refer to the Pi-hole DNS related documentation below.

1) Unbound
https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/dns/unbound/

2) DoH --> using cloudflared
https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/dns/cloudflared/

3) Upstream DNS providers
https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/dns/upstream-dns-providers/

BTW, the following is guide for remote accessing Pi-hole using Wireguard VPN. Tailscale is another option. I do not use Pi-hole or Adguard Home when I am outside.
https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/vpn/wireguard/

 

[sgcarousell]

How is unbound, is it better than other dns severs like quad and cloudflare?

Speed wise i didnt benchmark, but should save u some MS, main purpose for me is that i know the dns is up as long as my x86 openwrt is up and running haha....

 

[Jurong640]

following is guide for remote accessing Pi-hole using Wireguard VPN. Tailscale is another option. I do not use Pi-hole or Adguard Home when I am outside.

Speed wise i didnt benchmark, but should save u some MS, main purpose for me is that i know the dns is up as long as my x86 openwrt is up and running haha....

Thanks guys