What is your experience with Pi-hole and the Orange router?

A question for those, if there are any, how does Pi-hole work for you with an Orange router (a router that has hard-set DNS that cannot be changed).

I set up pi-hole, but as I read on the Internet, some of the addresses go through pi-hole, but some of them apparently go through the router from Orange and therefore many ads and other crap are not blocked.
You cannot replace this router because it is "paired" with the orange network or their main switchboard and you cannot connect your router.

However, ublock works well in the browser.

I used pi-hole, although not with the Orange router, but if you have access to the router settings, assign a static IP address to pi-hole and set the pi-hole IP address as DNS in the DHCP server settings. Then the devices will use pi-hole as DNS and everything will be blocked, or you will have to manually enter the pi-hole address as DNS in each device.

But DHCP in the router? I can`t change DNS there

foxeu wrote:

But DHCP in the router? I can`t change DNS there

then set up a hard-wired DNS server on your computer pointing to the pi-hole IP address

On the router, in the DHCP server settings (not on the client`s WAN port), it should be possible to set the IP address of the DNS server that is to be sent to the connected devices. If this is not possible, you must do as the guy above writes.

I just read on the Internet that despite setting DNS on each pihole device separately, some of the traffic is still sent through DNS from the router.

I already have pihole and DNS set up on my computer, I have a lot of blocking lists uploaded there, and yet there are sites where some ads (and probably other crap) are not blocked, and when I turn on Ublock in Chrome, it blocks relatively well.

Well, this pihole doesn`t work very well for me in general, but I don`t know if he has it like that or if it`s because of this router that it happens in my case.

If you have a DHCP server, e.g. in a router, and then the network interface in the operating system is set to obtain IP from DHCP, but you have DNS set in the system yourself (in Windows and Linux NetworkManager you can do this without any problems), the value coming from DHCP for DNS it is simply ignored. Nothing is happening with it, it is not implemented.

If you use a browser supplied with an antivirus and/or some strange antivirus, some of the DNS requests may go through some DNS indicated by this antivirus - who knows?

To check if there are any DNS queries other than to pi-hole, I suggest installing Wireshark, set to catch traffic to DNS (i.e. UDP/53 and TCP/53 ports), skip the pi-hole address and observe for some time.

The ads probably do not come from the typical domains of advertising providers, but are apparently distributed somehow through the domain addresses of specific websites, or, for example, the list of domains in pi-hole is still outdated.

Firstly:
If you want to configure devices via DHCP, simply turn off the DHCP server on the Orange router and run it on Pi-Hole. There is a quite flexible DHCP server there and you can configure it according to your wishes.
Secondly:
Pi-Hole copes poorly with Polish services. To make it work like this, you need to upload DOZENS of different lists and a machine with SSD and I5 on board to be able to handle such a database. Running on RPI makes no sense, because this mini PC does not work with a large database, and with a small database the effects of "blocking" are poor.
Thirdly:
Many browsers and mobile devices (including every Android and iPhone) have their own DNS server addresses embedded in their settings. Often, when responses cannot be obtained from servers specified in the explicit system configuration, these default servers are used.
Fourthly:
Many websites, especially Polish ones, use their own advertising websites, on their own domains, and then it is not even possible to block such crap, because by blocking the crap you are also blocking the actual content of the website.

In my opinion, comparing Pi-Hole with the solutions and operation of professional UTMs is a waste of fun. Professional UTM for the company and browser blockers for home.