[jimsmart]

That's kinda janky really.

DNS doesn't have redirection like HTTP has, so what you describe can only be implemented using port forwarding (or SSH tunnelling, but I've never seen a router with the ability to tunnel DNS in this fashion?).

Port forwarding used like this, won't enable one to use the 'groups' functionality on PiHole — which was the (g)parent thread here — because all requests arriving at the PiHole will come from the same client, i.e. the router. Because port forwarding is more like a proxy than a redirect (to use HTTP terms).

The correct solution here if one wishes to use PiHole's groups — and not have a janky network configuration like you describe here (an extra unnecessary hop for local DNS) — is to either (a) use the router's DHCP settings to tell the clients to use the PiHole IP for their DNS, or (b) disable the router's DHCP and simply use the DHCP that PiHole provides, which is at least as good as what most routers provide (and more configurable than most routers also, should one need to)

[sml156]

> DNS doesn't have redirection like HTTP

dnsmasq has grown up a lot in the last few years and does have the ability to redirect domains. It's that time again got to read the man page

[jimsmart]

Erm, it's not redirection, because, like I said: DNS has no redirection — not in the sense that HTTP does.

If you don't understand this, then you are perhaps lacking some knowledge as to how HTTP redirects work, and/or how DNS lookups work, and/or how they are quite different concepts.

HTTP has redirects. DNS doesn't - but sure, it can be intercepted / hijacked.

> It's that time again got to read the man page

No need for the snark, this is HN, not Reddit.

But I'm already well aware of the feature you describe (after all, PiHole/similar relies on exactly this kind of interception) — but it isn't actually new at all, dnsmasq has had this since the the very beginning, literally day one.

It's still not redirection like HTTP though, it's interception: serving an IP number from a conf file when a matching domain is requested instead of querying upstream. Very similar to adding an entry in your local hosts file.

Redirect isn't a term that is really ever used in DNS configuration. Except in the context of NXDOMAIN responses. And that's certainly not the topic of this thread.

With HTTP redirection, the server responds with 'moved' and the URL of the new location of the requested content. But all one can do with DNS requests, is to respond: this is the IP for the domain A/CNAME you requested (or respond no-such-domain). In HTTP, that kind of inline interception can only be done with a proxy (transparent or otherwise) — and that's not the same as a the HTTP redirect mechanism at all.

Some folk might argue that this is only a semantic difference. But it's not at all: they're quite different mechanisms, different traffic-flow / communication patterns. And the distinction is quite important to anyone who manages both DNS and HTTP, at a certain level.

But if you want to call it DNS redirection, then good for you. But the old-timers will call it out nearly every time, because it's not actually redirection. — DNS doesn't have redirection like HTTP. Not in the same sense as HTTP at all. Anyone who claims otherwise, really just needs to brush up on their DNS knowledge / terminology.

HTH

[master_crab]

That doesn’t correct the situation in which the device is ignoring DHCP DNS requests.

[jimsmart]

> That doesn’t correct the situation in which the device is ignoring DHCP DNS requests.

That's the first time such a thing has been mentioned in this thread.

But I now get what you're trying to say in your comment above.

Sure, one can use e.g. iptables, to forward all outbound traffic on some port to some local IP. If your router has such capabilities.

But your rules won't be as simple as forward all port 53 traffic: you'll need to ensure that you exclude the PiHole from any rules like that (otherwise it would create an infinite loop) - or ensure the rule is specific for the device(s) in question.

And of course it wouldn't work if the device is using DoH.

But the issue you've introduced here, a device with hard-coded DNS, isn't really what this thread is about — the topic here was ~about wanting to group clients in PiHole, and different ways to configure the router to achieve this, without only seeing a single requesting client IP at the PiHole.

[master_crab]

The question and assessment is around how your dhcp device can control DNS behavior (usually by broadcasting the name server IP). And I pointed out many devices that do DHCP often also act as the gateway device and internal firewall.

It’s not meant to answer your direct question, but pointing out what’s possible. Because yes, there are a lot of IoT and other devices that misbehave on a network.

And it’s incredibly trivial to port ban or port forward a selection of IPs and not affect the behavior of your Pi-hole. Packets carry last hop ip and source ip. I do it all the time on my gateway device.

DoH is a completely different story. Now you are talking about browser based DNS systems, apple private relay and other related 443 based solutions.

[jimsmart]

> DoH is a completely different story.

Yes. And that's why, in the context of misbehaving devices, carrying their own methods of doing DNS, I mentioned it.

> Now you are talking about browser based DNS systems, apple private relay and other related 443 based solutions.

No, not at all. Anything can use DoH. Doesn't need to be browser-based, nor using Apple private relay, nor anything of the kind. A device simply needs to be coded to make its DNS queries over HTTP. In a similar fashion to how it might have a hard-coded value for its DNS lookups, the developer can simply include a small library to do DoH instead. And that's not going to be so easily filterable by a rule for outgoing traffic / port forwarding.

I have all of my PiHole DNS lookups going over DoH. Have done for years now. Because when I originally setup my secure DNS, DoH was a better choice that DoT, because DoT was very much still in flux. And by comparison, DNS over an existing standardised transport is pretty much a known quantity. So that was my choice. And it works great.

So all of my network's DNS lookup go out over DoH... there's lots of DNS providers that provide DoH nowadays, including plenty of very big providers. My secure DNS proxy cycles between different servers.

DoH functionality is even just built-in to Bind these days.

In reality, DoH isn't in any way restricted just to the services you describe here. Far from it. It can be used anywhere. It's just a protocol. With plenty of destination endpoint support, out there in the real-world.

And if some device wants to control its DNS to that kind of level, then, beyond simply having a hard-coded DNS server value, using DoH is pretty easy.

No browsers needed, no Apple Private Relay needed.