New home networking help

DMS General
1

OK, setting up my new networking gear, and would welcome suggestions on the setup.

I will be replacing the current Spectrum provided cable modem/wifi router with a Arris SB6190-RM cable modem ( SB6190 SURFboard® DOCSIS® 3.0 Cable Modem ), a Asus RT-AX55 wifi router ( RT-AX55｜WiFi Routers｜ASUS USA ), and I’d like to add a PiHole to the setup as well.

Basic suggestions or point outs to online guides would be great. Not looking to create the uber secure network or anything else like that, just plugging the obvious holes and basic optimizations.

Thanks
.

2

Generally speaking, unless a device has to be mobile I prefer to go through the one-time effort of running an ethernet drop to get solid connectivity vs forever fighting ever-noisier wifi.

3 Likes
3

There should be an option to setup a DMZ (bypass firewall).

Make this your DMZ host and connect everything else to this device.

You may or may not be able to setup a DNS via the DHCP server settings on one of the routers (check the manual). If you can’t then you’ll have to manually define the DNS on each client.

4

Take it back and get a different modem.

We went through 3 of those damn 6190. They run very hot and all died at about 1 year old.

We bought the SB8200 and are seeing how it goes. Runs a lot cooler and has a different chipset in it. (DOCSIS 3.1 vs 3.0 too)

5

Just realized it’s a modem. In which case you can ignore the DMZ thing I mentioned. I incorrectly assumed it was a router from the service provider. The DNS stuff still applies for the PiHole (set via DHCP server options or manually per device).

6

+1

You don’t want to use the ISP’s DNS - and I say this as an employee of an ISP.

I personally use CloudFlare (1.1.1.1) as primary, Google (8.8.8.8) as secondary. OpenDNS is also another option (208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220).

3 Likes
7

I recommend OpenDNS. It will blackhole threat sites for you.

1 Like
8

There are three sets of openDNS depending if you want open, just non pron, and child safe (also blocks gambling and some others)

9

I think the IPs I quoted are the fully leaded flavour.