Deco M5, eero, DHCP and PiHole
Discussion
Guys,
I'm in a bit of a pickle and need to know the best way out. Or perhaps the least-inelegant way out.
I used to have Virgin broadband. There was a Hub3 (which was rubbish) but it plugged into my home Ethernet, I disabled the DHCP on it and ran DHCP on my PiHole. I could then hand out IP addresses using the DHCP in the PiHole as I wanted, and have a nice MAC-to-IP table set up in there. All was well with the world.
Today I have signed up to YouFibre. (I sincerely hope it is as good as everyone says it is, but that's another question.) This provides me with an ONT box on the wall and a separate eero router. The eero router looks like a good thing but it has a built-in DHCP server which can't be turned off.
This is OK because I also run a Deco M5 mesh wireless network and I can use one of the M5's as the router. I need to take the MAC address out of the eero device and type this MAC address into the 'Main' Deco, set the Deco system up as 'Router' (it was 'Access Point' before) and all is well. My network is running largely as it should without the eero thing in place.
However this then means the main Deco is running the DHCP server, which is wrong - I need to use the DHCP in the PiHole. However it seems that I can't run the Deco system in 'Router' mode without the DHCP server in it turned on. It is also not possible to disable the DHCP server in the Deco system while it is running 'Router' mode - i.e it is subject to the same limitations as the eero device.
Presuming that this is correct (and t'interwebs seem to confirm it) then what are my options?
Is it possible to have two DHCP servers on the same network, with the one in the Deco restricted to giving addresses from (say) 192.168.1.200-192.168.1.201, and allocate these to something innocuous (perhaps two printers or something like this), and then also have the DHCP server in the PiHole running as before with the full table of other IP allocations?
Or is there some other more elegant solution?
Thanks.
I'm in a bit of a pickle and need to know the best way out. Or perhaps the least-inelegant way out.
I used to have Virgin broadband. There was a Hub3 (which was rubbish) but it plugged into my home Ethernet, I disabled the DHCP on it and ran DHCP on my PiHole. I could then hand out IP addresses using the DHCP in the PiHole as I wanted, and have a nice MAC-to-IP table set up in there. All was well with the world.
Today I have signed up to YouFibre. (I sincerely hope it is as good as everyone says it is, but that's another question.) This provides me with an ONT box on the wall and a separate eero router. The eero router looks like a good thing but it has a built-in DHCP server which can't be turned off.
This is OK because I also run a Deco M5 mesh wireless network and I can use one of the M5's as the router. I need to take the MAC address out of the eero device and type this MAC address into the 'Main' Deco, set the Deco system up as 'Router' (it was 'Access Point' before) and all is well. My network is running largely as it should without the eero thing in place.
However this then means the main Deco is running the DHCP server, which is wrong - I need to use the DHCP in the PiHole. However it seems that I can't run the Deco system in 'Router' mode without the DHCP server in it turned on. It is also not possible to disable the DHCP server in the Deco system while it is running 'Router' mode - i.e it is subject to the same limitations as the eero device.
Presuming that this is correct (and t'interwebs seem to confirm it) then what are my options?
Is it possible to have two DHCP servers on the same network, with the one in the Deco restricted to giving addresses from (say) 192.168.1.200-192.168.1.201, and allocate these to something innocuous (perhaps two printers or something like this), and then also have the DHCP server in the PiHole running as before with the full table of other IP allocations?
Or is there some other more elegant solution?
Thanks.
You could run with double nat, this may or may not be a issue
https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeNetworking/comments/8...
The more elegant solution would be to run a pfsense / opensens / de-wrt as your router and hand off the acsses points to the deco’s.
This means using either a small pc, a £100 or so Chinese router or looking at the devices that run did-wrt.
That said if it’s running dhcp on pihole it sounds like the cheap Chinese boxes & pfsense / opensense are a reasonable option as they have equivalent options.
Eero seem to be a strange choice as many aspects are now subscription based….
https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeNetworking/comments/8...
https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeNetworking/comments/8...
The more elegant solution would be to run a pfsense / opensens / de-wrt as your router and hand off the acsses points to the deco’s.
This means using either a small pc, a £100 or so Chinese router or looking at the devices that run did-wrt.
That said if it’s running dhcp on pihole it sounds like the cheap Chinese boxes & pfsense / opensense are a reasonable option as they have equivalent options.
Eero seem to be a strange choice as many aspects are now subscription based….
https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeNetworking/comments/8...
Edited by Captain_Morgan on Friday 21st March 01:50
Edited by Captain_Morgan on Friday 21st March 01:57
Restricted functionality like that really hacks me off.
Put the Decos in bridge mode so they act as a simple mesh.
Set the eero dhcp to a single ip and add a static lease with a dummy mac. ( I suspect the eero is a more powerful router than the deco)
Let the pihole use its dhcp as usual.
Alternatively ditch the eero and replace with something like a nano pi r4s running openwrt.
I'm running one of these on fttp and it's just infinitely more useful than any isp supplied router.
Mine runs nginx, pihole in a docker container, does qos and sqm (not needed so much with 900mb down and up) bandwidth accounting traffic graphs, all the good stuff.
Put the Decos in bridge mode so they act as a simple mesh.
Set the eero dhcp to a single ip and add a static lease with a dummy mac. ( I suspect the eero is a more powerful router than the deco)
Let the pihole use its dhcp as usual.
Alternatively ditch the eero and replace with something like a nano pi r4s running openwrt.
I'm running one of these on fttp and it's just infinitely more useful than any isp supplied router.
Mine runs nginx, pihole in a docker container, does qos and sqm (not needed so much with 900mb down and up) bandwidth accounting traffic graphs, all the good stuff.
Edited by .:ian:. on Friday 21st March 07:59
2Btoo said:
Guys,
However this then means the main Deco is running the DHCP server, which is wrong - I need to use the DHCP in the PiHole. However it seems that I can't run the Deco system in 'Router' mode without the DHCP server in it turned on. It is also not possible to disable the DHCP server in the Deco system while it is running 'Router' mode - i.e it is subject to the same limitations as the eero device.
Presuming that this is correct (and t'interwebs seem to confirm it) then what are my options?
I'm not sure that's right. I believe PiHole's key component is its DNS server. (It /can/ do DHCP too, but only for rare situations).However this then means the main Deco is running the DHCP server, which is wrong - I need to use the DHCP in the PiHole. However it seems that I can't run the Deco system in 'Router' mode without the DHCP server in it turned on. It is also not possible to disable the DHCP server in the Deco system while it is running 'Router' mode - i.e it is subject to the same limitations as the eero device.
Presuming that this is correct (and t'interwebs seem to confirm it) then what are my options?
In Deco, you can set the DNS server(s) to be your Pihole, and leave the Deco doing DHCP, while staying in Router mode.
Guys,
Thanks for the answers. Talk of pfsense / opensens / openwrt had me reaching for both Google and the smelling salts as I'm a very entry-level techie and such things are beyond me. Having Googled then this does indeed look like a better solution but more faff than I liked.
As it was, the solution was to create as small an address space in the DHCP server in the eero and fill it up with dummy MAC addresses, meaning that it will never hand out an IP address. I then used the DHCP server in the PiHole as before, which then carries on handing out the same IP addresses to everything. And it all works nicely (well, with a few hitches which were my fault.) Simple solution when written like this, but it took me a long time to work it out. The eero is a better router than the Decos (which always seemed to give an error of some kind) and this has the advantage that it's the router YouFibre gave me, so they should be happier if I need support. It's not the nicest to use as it doesn't have a web server so everything is done on the app (which I hate), and the smallest IP range allowable in the DHCP is 11 addresses, but now that is set up then I shouldn't need to touch it again.
Thanks again for your help.
Thanks for the answers. Talk of pfsense / opensens / openwrt had me reaching for both Google and the smelling salts as I'm a very entry-level techie and such things are beyond me. Having Googled then this does indeed look like a better solution but more faff than I liked.
As it was, the solution was to create as small an address space in the DHCP server in the eero and fill it up with dummy MAC addresses, meaning that it will never hand out an IP address. I then used the DHCP server in the PiHole as before, which then carries on handing out the same IP addresses to everything. And it all works nicely (well, with a few hitches which were my fault.) Simple solution when written like this, but it took me a long time to work it out. The eero is a better router than the Decos (which always seemed to give an error of some kind) and this has the advantage that it's the router YouFibre gave me, so they should be happier if I need support. It's not the nicest to use as it doesn't have a web server so everything is done on the app (which I hate), and the smallest IP range allowable in the DHCP is 11 addresses, but now that is set up then I shouldn't need to touch it again.
.:ian:. said:
Restricted functionality like that really hacks me off.
Amen, Brother! Thanks again for your help.
2Btoo, that seems like a very over-complicated solution.
The easy answer is to get rid of the YouFibre router, put the Deco in its place (with default DHCP and DNS). Prove that works (it should be straightforward, it's used by many thousands of people like that). Then set the Deco to send DNS requests to your PiHole. Done.
But if you have your solution working, then fingers crossed it stays so.
The easy answer is to get rid of the YouFibre router, put the Deco in its place (with default DHCP and DNS). Prove that works (it should be straightforward, it's used by many thousands of people like that). Then set the Deco to send DNS requests to your PiHole. Done.
But if you have your solution working, then fingers crossed it stays so.
biggiles said:
2Btoo, that seems like a very over-complicated solution.
The easy answer is to get rid of the YouFibre router, put the Deco in its place (with default DHCP and DNS). Prove that works (it should be straightforward, it's used by many thousands of people like that). Then set the Deco to send DNS requests to your PiHole. Done.
But if you have your solution working, then fingers crossed it stays so.
Hi Biggiles, The easy answer is to get rid of the YouFibre router, put the Deco in its place (with default DHCP and DNS). Prove that works (it should be straightforward, it's used by many thousands of people like that). Then set the Deco to send DNS requests to your PiHole. Done.
But if you have your solution working, then fingers crossed it stays so.
Thanks. It probably is over-complicated, but given the constraints (i.e using the better DHCP server in PiHole which already has a large number of fixed IP addresses for Home Assistant devices, along with keeping things manageable and not buying more kit) then it seems like a sensible choice. In practice, the DHCP server in the eero is jammed up with fictional MAC addresses so will never do anything, and the DHCP in the PiHole does everything it did before using the existing IP tables.
Running one of the Decos as a router was an option but it didn't seem to work very well; there were a few errors produced which I didn't understand. More problematically, it has the same constraint as the eero; namely that if you use it as a router then it has to have the DHCP server enabled, so I'd have all the same problems with trying to use the DHCP in the PiHole.
FWIW, this (overly-complex) setup does seem to work, so I am happy with it. The only downside is that eleven IP addresses at the end of the range are permanently unusable due to being 'reserved' in the eero DHCP server, but I can live with this for now. Perhaps I can hard-code some of the devices to assume these addresses to use them up, on the basis that they will never be allocated by the eero, but that's a job for another day.
BTW, one thing I didn't mention was the use of IPv6 addresses rather than IPv4's. The eero was using IPv6 addresses as a default and they are hellishly confusing. Perhaps this is a discussion for another thread but turning off the IPv6 option was a key step to making things understandable!
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