Installing Pi-Hole on to the devices with Blocking Rules causes slow down Internet access to all devices being monitored.

February 28, 2020 06:46

I recently installed PI-Hole into Firewalla Blue and I was getting a complaint from my kids regarding slowness in internet access. I've had to reboot the box to get the speed back, but soon within a few hours, the slowness starts again.

I've checked the load of the box using Top, but the CPU usage is quite low, memory usage is about 70%, and the load is between 0.4 & 1.5. I pinged the box from my PC and there seem to be many request timeouts. I get about 1 to 5 request timeouts for every 5 to 10 normal responses which seem abnormal.

I wasn't sure, so I've reset the box and installed the PI-Hole again, but this time I didn't add any Blocking Rules except the default "Active Protect Rules". This time, I had no slowness for 2 days, but once I've added any blocking rule to any of the devices being monitored, the slowness begins.

Even after deleting the blocking rules, resetting the policy rules, rebooting help for a few hours, but the slowness begins again.

So this time, I had to reset the box and this time I had to give up PI-Hole.

Is there anyone seeing this issue?

Regards,

Richard

Comments

5 comments

Manny Cavalier

March 05, 2020 14:52
You might need to increase the size of your memory/flash card. Check also your CPU usage when running pi-hole. You can see that on the upper left hand of the pi-hole GUI.
0

Comment actions Permalink
Richard Jacobs

March 19, 2020 03:51
Hi Manny,

Thanks for your comment.

As I have mentioned, CPU and Memory usages are not high and the storage is free when I check with df -h.

I started to get slow down even after removing Pi-Hole, so I suspect something wrong with my network.

I use Linksys EA8500 which is in the compatible list so I assume some device that I've added may be causing the issue, but even if I disable monitoring all of the devices except the one that is used for the testing, the slow down occurs.

I gave up and changed to DHCP mode using the same subnet for Primary and Overlay.

Now everything is working fine even with Pi-Hole.

Thanks,

Richard
0

Comment actions Permalink
Jon Ochoa

March 21, 2020 16:33
@Richard Jacobs, any chance you can give a more detailed description/images of what you did?

I have a Pi-Hole installed on the network and I ran into the same thing I ended up just turning off my Firewalla.
0

Comment actions Permalink
Richard Jacobs

March 22, 2020 02:00
@Jon Ochoa, I used DHCP mode set the overlay DNS to the Firewalla IP (I use Method 2 based on https://help.firewalla.com/hc/en-us/articles/360021737793-How-to-keep-your-network-unchanged-in-DHCP-mode-), and it's working perfectly now.

Maybe you can take a look at the following post if you haven't.

https://www.reddit.com/r/firewalla/comments/d0nq5p/want_to_run_pihole_on_firewalla_in_5_min/
0

Comment actions Permalink
Jon Ochoa

March 22, 2020 16:13
@Richard Jacobs, Thank you sir I'll try this out
0

Comment actions Permalink

Please sign in to leave a comment.

Comments

Didn't find what you were looking for?