DHCP Settings

Make sure your router's DHCP server is disabled when using the Pi-hole DHCP server!

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Router
Netmask

Leave the netmask field empty to have Pi-hole infer it from the configured IP address of your device. If you want to specify a netmask, you can use the format 255.255.255.0.

 

Enable this option to enable IPv6 support for the Pi-hole DHCP server. This will allow the Pi-hole to hand out IPv6 addresses to clients and also provide IPv6 router advertisements (RA) to clients. This option is only useful if the Pi-hole is configured with an IPv6 address.

Advanced DHCP Settings

Lease time

The lease time can be in seconds, minutes (e.g., "45m"), hours (e.g., "1h"), days (like "2d"), or even weeks ("1w"). If no lease time is specified (empty), dnsmasq's default lease time is one hour for IPv4 and one day for IPv6. You may also use "infinite" as string but be aware of the drawbacks: assigned addresses are will only be made available again after the lease time has passed or when leases are manually deleted below.

 

The DHCPv4 rapid commit option allows the Pi-hole DHCP server to assign an IP address to a client right away. This can notably speed up the address assignment process and you will notice, e.g., faster WiFi joins in your network. This option should only be enabled if the Pi-hole DHCP server is the only DHCP server in your network.

 

Advertise DNS server multiple times to clients. Some devices will add their own proprietary DNS servers to the list of DNS servers, which can cause issues with Pi-hole. This option will advertise the Pi-hole DNS server multiple times to clients, which should prevent this from happening.

 

If this option is set, Pi-hole ignores all clients which are not explicitly configured through dhcp.hosts. This can be useful to prevent unauthorized clients from getting an IP address from the DHCP server.
It should be noted that this option is not a security feature, as clients can still assign themselves an IP address and use the network. It is merely a convenience feature to prevent unknown clients from getting a valid IP configuration assigned automatically.
Note: When this feature is enabled you will need to configure new clients manually in dhcp.hosts before they can use the network.

Currently active DHCP leases

IP address Hostname MAC address Expiration Client ID

Static DHCP configuration

Specify per host parameters for the DHCP server. This allows a machine with a particular hardware address to be always allocated the same hostname, IP address and lease time. A hostname specified like this overrides any supplied by the DHCP client on the machine. It is also allowable to omit the hardware address and include the hostname, in which case the IP address and lease times will apply to any machine claiming that name.


 

Each entry should be on a separate line, and should be of the form:

[<hwaddr>][,id:<client_id>|*][,set:<tag>][,tag:<tag>][,<ipaddr>][,<hostname>][,<lease_time>][,ignore]

Only one entry per MAC address is allowed.

Examples:

  • 00:20:e0:3b:13:af,192.168.0.123
    tells Pi-hole to give the machine with hardware address 00:20:e0:3b:13:af the address 192.168.0.123
     
  • 00:20:e0:3b:13:af,laptop
    tells Pi-hole to give the machine with hardware address 00:20:e0:3b:13:af the name laptop
     
  • 00:20:e0:3b:13:af,192.168.0.123,laptop,infinite
    tells Pi-hole to give the machine with hardware address 00:20:e0:3b:13:af the address 192.168.0.123, the name laptop, and an infinite DHCP lease
     

Advanced description