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Model No. TL-WR841N

I'm trying to change the DNS provider to Quad9 to block ads from reaching my TV. Guides show the DNS settings in the WAN tab of a TP-Link router:

guide example

However, I have different options:

my options

Changing to Dynamic IP provides DNS settings, but then the Internet connection is lost. My ISP said I should keep it as PPPoE for it to work.

It appears the TP-Link is used as a modem and it's connected to a ZTE router. But trying to access the IP listed on the back of that router doesn't connect to anything. A different suggestion was to change the operating mode of the modem to "router mode". But I can't find any setting for that.

How should I proceed?

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  • How to configure the device to Wireless Router Mode is described in the User Guide, Chapter 4
    – Peregrino69
    Mar 5, 2023 at 13:13
  • What options do you have in the "DHCP" section?
    – u1686_grawity
    Mar 5, 2023 at 13:21
  • @Peregrino69 That leads to a URL which leads to the home IP, which leads to the router settings I was already looking at. No operating mode there, unfortunately.
    – Chiaros
    Mar 5, 2023 at 13:33
  • @user1686 That window has Primary and Secondary DNS fields! Adding Quad9's addresses there didn't work straight away. Using their .11 (ECS-Enabled) addresses seems to have worked, though. How should I accept your comment as a valid answer?
    – Chiaros
    Mar 5, 2023 at 13:33

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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If your router doesn't have an option to override the DNS configuration received from the ISP, you should still be able override what the router advertises to clients via DHCP. Go to the "DHCP" Section and check whether it allows specifying custom servers to be advertised via DHCP leases.

(This won't make the router itself use Quad9, but that doesn't matter, as hosts won't be asking the router for DNS lookups anymore.)

Note that this will cause all your LAN devices to talk directly to the specified DNS servers, where previously they might have used the router's built-in DNS cache. This doesn't matter for devices that have their own internal caches (e.g. all Windows PCs), but in some cases – e.g. if you're using Linux and don't have DNS caching enabled – it will mean that requests for hosts that might've been locally cached will actually take somewhat longer to resolve, as they still need to go all the way to Quad9 instead of being answered from the router's cache. (Of course, if Quad9 has servers just a few milliseconds away from you, then it doesn't matter either way.)

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