Once the Pi-hole is up and running, the first thing I want to configure is its upstream DNS servers. The upstream DNS servers can provide additional filters (e.g. adult-related sites, social networking sites, etc) that are not included in the Pi-hole default installation.
I have been using OpenDNS as my home router's upstream DNS servers for a long time. I sign up an OpenDNS account so I can customize the kind of content to block or the sites to be whitelisted. It works great.
On the Pi-hole admin page, under Settings —> DNS. It has a list of built-in upstream DNS servers, e.g. Google, OpenDNS, Quad9, Cloudflare, etc.
- OpenDNS: OpenDNS is my original first choice since I have been using its filter for a long time as I mentioned above. My only concern with OpenDNS is that Cisco acquired OpenDNS in 2015; and not sure whether this free service will continue to be maintained. But I don’t have other good options at the time.
- Google DNS: Google DNS has a relatively fast response time. It doesn’t provide content filtering. Google’s ad tracking business makes me stay away from its products when I can. So I stop using Google DNS.
- Cloudflare DNS: Cloudflare DNS has a fast response time. It doesn’t provide content filtering. After knowing Mozilla includes Cloudflare DoH in their newer version of Firefox, I trust Cloudflare’s privacy practice. Combining with Pi-hole other filtering feature, I switch to Cloudflare DNS as my upstream DNS servers until I learn about CleanBrowsing DNS.
- CleanBrowsing DNS: CleanBrowsing DNS’s free filters (Security, Adult, and Family) are silmiar to OpenDNS, except the free plan doesn’t offer custom filters (e.g. gaming, grambling, etc). However, its free adult or family filter can filter the search engines (Google and Bing) result in safe mode, which I don’t see in other DNS filter. So CleanBrowsing DNS’s audlt filter is my choice for the Pi-hole upstream DNS at the home network. (PS. the family filter blocks Reddit site. I agree some contents on Reddit is not appropriate, but it also has many good technical disucssion.)
CleanBrowsing DNS setup on Pi-hole
- http://<pihole.ip.address>/admin
- Setting, DNS, Upstream DNS Servers
- Custom 1 (IPv4): 185.228.168.10
- Custom 2 (IPv4): 185.228.169.11
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