DNS and Networking Basics.
All right, before starting this course,
you should have a basic knowledge of networking,
and some familiarity with Linux will go a long way as well.
Let's talk about DNS, DNS stands for Domain Name System.
It's sort of like the phone book of the internet.
Some of us remember those large books full of names and
associated phone numbers we kept in our home.
You'd look up a person or a business,
and it would tell you what the phone number you'd have to dial was.
This is a local record.
If we didn't have one, we could call up information,
or 411 for example, and ask for a name, city,
and information would give us that phone number.
This is like an authoritative record.
When we want to go to a website, it operates in a similar way.
We open up our browser of choice and type in a URL
in the address bar and hit Enter.
Computers talk to each other by IP addresses.
Because most of us are humans or cyborgs,
it's easier to remember words than IPv4 addresses or the
much more difficult IPv6 addresses.
DNS will take a website or domain like pluralsight.com and ask a DNS server,
hey, what is the IP address for pluralsight.com,
to which it will reply with an IP address.
This would get sent back,
and the browser would then know how it can call that web
page and send it back to your browser.
That's the basic gist of it.
So where does Pi‑hole come in?
We'll go deeper into that,
but what if you don't want anyone calling a certain number?
Pi‑hole would be the equivalent of going to your phone book and blanking
out that number so you wouldn't be able to look it up.
If that seems too simple, don't worry.
We'll see it in action shortly.
Like I mentioned in the previous section,
Pi‑hole was built to run on a Raspberry Pi microcomputer.
This is a small, relatively inexpensive computer.
If you'd like to learn more about the basics of Raspberry Pi,
I'd recommend you check out Jon Flanders Pluralsight course,
Raspberry Pi for Developers.
He covers the basics of Raspberry Pi, use cases, programming, and more.
I'll link his course here.
There are a couple different types of Raspberry Pis available.
The Raspberry Pi 4 is a standard size, about the size of a deck of playing cards.
Then there are smaller models, like the Raspberry Pi 0.
You can set up the Pi‑hole on most Raspberry Pis,
but I recommend doing it with one that has an Ethernet
connection on the microcomputer.
The main reason for this is because it will be functioning as
a network device and handling all of your DNS queries for all
of the devices on your network.
You can do this over Wi‑Fi, but realize that this can cause latency issues,
and having a wired connection will keep things more stable
and going the fastest possible speeds.
I like the Raspberry Pi 4 with the Ethernet jack,
power supply, heat sink, and case.
We shouldn't be cranking too much through these, but better plan ahead.
I'd also recommend getting a microSD card with at
least 8 GB of storage for the OS, as well as all of the logs you'll be gathering.
If you have one or can get a Raspberry Pi, please do and follow along.
There is a Docker image available as well, if you'd prefer to go that route.
We'll have a video clip on that specifically a little bit later.
All right, before we launch into installing and configuring our Pi‑holes,
there are a couple of gotchas I've got to bring up.
One component that is necessary is your network router.
We'll be setting up this router to talk to your Pi‑hole to act
as the main DNS server for your network.
Some entry‑level routers or routers you rent from your internet service
provider have the DNS server IP addresses hard coded,
and you can't change them on your end.
I'll show you an example of where you can check this.
This will be different on different routers,
so you may have to check the documentation specific to your router.
If you do have one of those routers you can't change
and already have a Raspberry Pi,
I suggest you check out some of our other Pluralsight
courses on Raspberry Pi projects or install RetroPie and
have your own retro video game console.
So, now you know about what Pi‑hole is and a little about Raspberry Pis.
We talked about some basic DNS networking and what
you'll need to do to get started.
All right, let's get started installing Pi‑hole in our next module.