I see from your later pasts that you have a Synology DS920+. Can you report if you are using pi-hole on it, and how is the stability? I currently run Pi-hole off a RPi, and it works beautifully. I will be upgrading my NAS one day (target is DS220+), and will be running Pi-hole in Docker on it.

My current NAS is a Synology DS212j, and although it works well, the interface is incredibly slow and there are less updates for it. I just use it for the occasional torrent, where I have a browser plugin to right-click and send the download task to the NAS. Also do an auto backup of the important documents from my work (using Cloud Station Backup on the PC), which is then also backed up to the cloud. (Using Cloud Sync on the NAS) I am quite happy with the data redundancy since the NAS is also using SHR mirrored. Meaning I have a data copy on my PC, one on each NAS HDD, and one in the cloud, and is accessible when I am out and about.

The icing on the cake would be running Pi-hole on the NAS too! Other than wanting Docker on it, and being a bit slow, the NAS has been almost flawless (the external PSU has died once....) in all the time I have been using it. 7 years running 24/7!  Highly recommended.

Does anyone have any recommendation for a UPS? I was thinking of this RightPower. Would appreciate it if anyone has any experience and able to report back.

^{Edit: spelling and grammar}

I don't know why you keep talking about router access.

A DNS server is an "address book" of all the computers that have websites (aka web servers) in the world.

When you type "pornwebsite.com" into your browser.....
If you use Cloudflare DNS server, the data returned will be "Look for the webserver at No 1, Pornwebsite street, USA" and the browser will display that porn page
If you use TM DNS server, the data returned will be "Look for the webserver at Tingkat atas, goverment M'sia building" and the browser will display the page "Laman sesawang ini something something is prohibited"
If you use your own DNS server (aka Pi-hole), you can resolve the address to any webserver you want (because it is your own private address book, right?) You could even point it to lowyat.net, and your browser will display lowyat.net every time you type pornwebsite.com into your browser.

In Pi-hole's case, it is meant to block known ad and malicious webservers. When you type "general-interest-hobbies.com" into your browser, and that website asks for a banner advertisement from "ad-data-webserver.com", Pi-hole will give the correct address of general-interest-hobbies.com, but will not give the address of ad-data-webserver.com, because that is in the blocklist. You end up only seeing the website, and not the banner ad in your browser.

^{Disclaimer : All the websites stated are made-up for this post, but they could be real for all I know. And the addresses too. IRL the addresses would be a number, either in IPv4 or IPv6, or both. Some of the information is not exactly accurate because I have tried to explain it in people understandable language}

VPN make sure which site you go can't be known by ISP or other device, such as the network server/router on your company or the cafe wifi router. All these let's call it as middle-men.
Example, you go to maybank, lowyat, youtube website. But you're using, let's say VPNnord, all the middle-men see is you only going to VPNnord site. Thus the middle-men can't monitor what you're doing or steal your credential. Only the VPN know where you actually going and the data that's being exchanged, and there are cases of VPN company that give the user logs to govt when requested.

Even if you use VPN, you can still be misled to fake site as the website address is determined by DNS server, as explained below.

DNS server is the phone book. Let's say you want to go maybank site, you type maybank2u.com.my, the DNS server that check what are the ip for that site, in this case it is 118.214.167.79. DNS Spoofing is when an attacker change the maybank ip to other ip, usually to fake site so that they can steal your credential. Your PC or phone will think it is the correct address, even sees maybank2u.com.my at the address bar.


Use ISP DNS will concern of security and privacy plus no blocking of ads. Use Google DNS will concern of privacy and no blocking of ads.

Since PC > NAS > Cloud, if you edit the file in in the NAS directly, the Cloud one changes, but the PC one does not. Do note that if you change the name of the file, the file on the NAS and Cloud is NOT deleted, but rather a new file is created. I'm counting on this to save me from ransomware, as the name of the file is changed if you get infected.

I don't have UnifiTV (UTV), so I am just guessing for this. Firstly, can you check if PiHole is actually stopping UTV?
In PiHole, Disable > 5 minutes, and check if UTV works.
See in Query Log any Unifi domains are blocked? If Yes, then whitelist
In Settings > DNS, include back the DNS for UTV under the Upstream DNS Servers Custom 1 to Custom 4

There is also this below, where you would allow the UTV box IP address to bypass PiHole filtering, but I'm not so sure how it is done

Hope this helps

For me I'll just set manual DNS to opendns/google/etc. on any device that wants to bypass pihole. did this for my wife's phone since she complained she has trouble going on pinterest.