Published May 8, 2026, 10:00 AM EDT

Shekhar Vaidya is a veteran technology journalist and computer science engineer. He is the founder of TechLatest, where he has spent years providing technical analysis on hardware and Windows ecosystems. Now a Computing Writer at XDA, Shekhar leverages his deep background in NAS, storage solutions, and PC internals to help readers master their tech.

Like most self-hosting enthusiasts, I also installed Pi-hole, implemented it network-wide, and moved on thinking it finally gave me control over my network along with a cleaner browsing experience. Running it on my Debian Docker setup already felt like a solid upgrade, and in no time it quietly embedded itself into my setup. Since it was implemented network-wide, every device on my network was already using it silently.

While setting up Pi-hole, I configured it to use Cloudflare and Quad9 as my upstream DNS servers, and at that time, I barely thought about that part.…