this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2026
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I'm curious as why you decided to setup pihole when you already have opnsense. More so that your records are in pihole and not opnsense
I've had pihole years before the opnsense, but also opnsense is not the main router but just sits in front of my homelab. The wifi etc is a FritzBox, which also acts as WAN for opnsense.
That way, everything still in the house still works if my homelab/opnsense is down. Pihole is on a pi in the FritzBox LAN.
That sounds overly complicated, why not have it all on opnsense instead of 3 different devices?
Is your opnsense unstable? Otherwise regarding network availability you are just introducing unnecessary failure points the network.
The point of the opnsense is that I can tinker with it without risking our home wifi. It needs to stay up for my wife, for our mqtt devices/home assistant etc.
I don't introduce points of failure to our home network which is the critical part. If something in the opnsense misbehaves, it only impacts my lab stuff. The FritzBox + Pihole combination has proven pretty stable over years, even though I'm considering getting a second Pihole device for high availability.
Ah right, I thought you were doing it like this
Internet -> Fritzbox + Pihole -> Opnsense -> Home Network
It makes sense now :D
Yeah that would be a bit convoluted :D