Guest WiFi + pi-hole (on Spark's router)

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Rincey

43 posts

Geek

#304211 14-Apr-2023 07:31

I want to set up/enable Guest WiFi on my Spark router, which was easy enough to do, but guest clients fail to acquire an IP address.

I'm guessing this is because I don't do DHCP on the router - I do it on my pi-hole (so I can point clients at the pi-hole for DNS, and the router for the gateway).

Does anyone know if it is possible to:

a) allow the guest network to get to my DHCP server on the pi-hole?

or b) swap back to the router as the DHCP server, but allow for a more complex config (ie, DNS is the pi-hole, GW is the router)

I found some discussion online for other WiFi solution that have advanced options to allow exactly this, but poking around I can't find this in the Spark router.

(I have a Mikrotik RB2011 sitting in a drawer - should I dust that off, and try with that? I haven't used that for 5+ years, back when I was in Wellington on TCL cable. Now on Spark fibre. So the RB2011 is going to need a little bit of config, but I see there are good posts on this site how to set up fibre with the RB2011. I haven't re-looked to see if Guest network setups are included)

TIA.

Wombat1

586 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#3063483 14-Apr-2023 08:36

Sounds tricky because then your Pihole will have to be on both networks, and the dhcp server will need to be dealing with 2 seperate ip address ranges.

I have a guest network too but it’s setup from my fritzbox, I don’t want to give it access to my pihole, it’s possible to open it up to the guest network but do you really want to do that?

michaelmurfy

meow
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#3063492 14-Apr-2023 09:06

Have a look at NextDNS: https://nextdns.io/?from=4f6vmry3 (referral link).

This allows you to create multiple profiles so you can create one for your main and another for your guest + take it with you on your mobile devices too.

Do however remember that sites like Geekzone are ad-supported and it does keep them afloat. With more and more people blocking ads if you get value off these sites you should support them in other ways.

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Rincey

43 posts

Geek

#3063577 14-Apr-2023 10:26

Wombat1: Sounds tricky because then your Pihole will have to be on both networks, and the dhcp server will need to be dealing with 2 seperate ip address ranges.

I have a guest network too but it’s setup from my fritzbox, I don’t want to give it access to my pihole, it’s possible to open it up to the guest network but do you really want to do that?

I wondered about this (instead of working ).

If I was doing DHCP on the Spark device, there's only one DHCP admin page. It must give out a separate range to Guests, otherwise how does it block guests from your internal IP subnet?

Bit of a shame there's not a separate DHCP admin page for the Guest network. That would solve it (so long you weren't an idiot and used the same range for both :) )

I don't care about Guests and ads (ie the pi-hole's primary function). Its just the DHCP server I need from the pi-hole. But as you say: how would it know which range to give to which client.

The whole thing is a bit of a rare edge case. Maybe I'll disable the pi-hole, turn on DHCP on the router, and see what IP a test guest device gets. I'm quite intrigued with this now ;)

I assume you can configure the Fritzbox DHCP to give out any DNS server's IP? That's the main problem with the Spark device's DHCP server - you can't dictate DNS settings. It defaults to itself. Hence why I have the pi-hole as the DHCP server.

Wombat1

586 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#3063610 14-Apr-2023 12:16

Rincey:

I assume you can configure the Fritzbox DHCP to give out any DNS server's IP? That's the main problem with the Spark device's DHCP server - you can't dictate DNS settings. It defaults to itself. Hence why I have the pi-hole as the DHCP server.

It just does it all by itself, by default the guest network is on a different IP range, and those devices get managed seperately. Have not tried to change the DNS settings on the guest network, but I am sure it can be done.

Fritzbox manages this very well actually, you can assign different access profiles to the guest network, regulate internet use, even limit guest network bandwidth. If you dont want to use pihole for add blocking on your guest network then the firtizbox is going to do a far better job.