Run Adguard Home in Access Point mode?

New Flint owner here. My current setup is an Asus router with dual WAN to the ISP. The Asus router does DHCP and DNS atm.

I would like to add the Flint upstream (behind the Asus) and use it as the main DNS server running Adguard Home. The simplest way to do this would be to run the Flint in Access Point mode, keeping it on the same subnet as the Asus. However it appears that running in AP mode disables the ability to run AGH. Is there any known workaround to allow AP + AGH at the same time?

If not, would you have any suggestion re running the Flint in Router mode while still allowing devices on the Asus subnet to access AGH? I played with it a bit in luci but couldn’t seem to get reliable access to AGH via the Flint’s ports.

Again, best solution would be AP + AGH. I’m sure there are good reasons for disabling AGH … but :cry:

AP mode works at the data link layer, so the router can’t use the DNS protocol in this mode.
You can turn on ADGuard Home in AP mode, but the DNS service will not work.

Maybe Drop-in Gateway Mode would help?

Thank you for the quick reply!

If I understand correctly this means that AGH would not filter/block, but it would run and use CPU? :sweat_smile:

This sounds interesting. I gather it is not in the Flint beta firmware yet?

Kind regards

I am using the Flint in Router mode, with a static address to an upstream router, and the WAN changed to use as a LAN, in the same network as the upstream router, and using AGH, and it works.

I have it in router mode.
The lan on the flint is set to 192.168.1.2
The upstream router is 192.168.1.1
The WAN is switched to use as LAN
Flint is connected to upstream using ethernet cable in the “wan” port.

The other ethernet ports on the flint are all AGH protected, along with everything that’s connected to the Flint wifi.

The wifi clients of the flint all are running with DHCP, and everything works great.

The router acts as if it were an access point when it is in router mode when the wan is switched to use as a lan.

Yes

Yes, it is not 4.0.1 Beta for Flint yet.
We are in the process of officially upgrading Flint to 4.x. But the Release firmware for Flint will not be released until at least a month later.

No worries. Happy to wait. And many thanks for all the great features/mods already in your builds :+1:

Thank you. I may give this variant a try - have done something like this in the past.

Do you have DHCP running on both routers or just the flint?

I have DHCP running on both routers. I assigned 3-100 on the primary router and 101-150 on the Flint so they don’t overlap. They can each assign IP addresses in their own ranges.

The Flint is assigned a static address in the Flint settings, and the LAN address in the Flint settings is set to that same address, 192.168.1.2.

Any device that connects to Flint is assigned an IP address from the Flint, and it takes on the DNS server’s address as 192.168.1.2, which is the Flint. So AGH works under Flint for all connected devices.

However, connecting to the primary router is not AGH protected because it is 192.168.1.1.

@Flintman
Cool. Thank you. This is how I have my Nest mesh and Asus set up atm with the split ranges and shared DNS. Although the ranges are split all devices can see all other devices on that subnet.

When I added the Flint with a three-way range, devices connecting to the Flint couldn’t make the extra hop to the internet (whereas the Nest and Asus could). But that was using WAN as WAN plugged into the Asus LAN port. I’ll try your WAN reassigned as LAN trick. I might also try disabling all but one DHCP.

Have you tried pointing the first router to AGH on the Flint to force all devices to use AGH?

If all else fails it might be time to kill the danged Nest nodes. Persnickety little devices

No, I don’t know enough about DNS to mess with that. I did not have to do anything to the primary router except modify the DHCP ranges. The ethernet cable runs from the LAN on the primary router to “WAN” on the Flint, but it is switched to be used as a LAN in the Flint settings.

I did not have to make any changes to the AGH settings in Flint, it automatically works just by switching the WAN to LAN and setting the Static IP address and LAN address in the Flint.