[rnix]

I ran into issue where my current setup results huge number of DNS queries and eventually pihole rate limiter kicks in which results no connection.
10.10.10.254 is pihole

It happens only when I force pihole DNS with firewall rules taken from sticky below, based on example 2
https://forum.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1256879#1256879

Seems something causes loop in DNS chain, but I cannot figure out what exactly.

[ho1Aetoo]

WAN down?

[rnix]

WAN is not down as I can still resolve all pages until rate limiter kicks in due excessive amount (4000+) or queries.

[ho1Aetoo]

Then I don't know, it can't really be a loop...
show a screenshot of the dashboard and query log

the rule does the following....
br0 packets that are not from 10.10.10.254 and are not addressed to dnsmasq are redirected to dnsmasq

br1 Packets that are not addressed to dnsmasq are redirected to dnsmasq

dnsmasq forwards them to the Pi-Hole and the Pi-Hole to unbound and unbound asks the upstream / root server

as said packets from 10.10.10.254 are not redirected so theoretically there can be no loop.

dns querie floods can occur if there is something wrong with the WAN and the upstream DNS servers are not reachable then requests are answered with N/A
These results are not cached and the client keeps asking

[rnix]

Output the last lines of the pihole.log file (live)

[ho1Aetoo]

And when in the time period was the dns redirection activated?
By the way, you have to click on one of those high bars to get to the query log and see which queries are being queried in bulk.

But I can see from your screenshots that you are using a firmware version that is at least 1.5 years old.

You should update the router firmware and dnsmasq or at least add these options to dnsmasq

[rnix]

Well, I don't know what to say, but seems issue was self-resolved after I completely rebooted my pihole and router (which I tried earlier too).

To answer your earlier questions,
Redirection was re-activated just temporarily so I could demonstrate spikes on dashboard. I had to disable it before due to same issue.

I clicked on one of higest bars and tried to look for high amount of same queries which I found from apple devices.
However I could manually cause similar spikes by just navigating to various websites and total queries count shoots up immediately on dashboard.

I'm not sure where it was indicated I run outdated firmware as my router has r55416
My wireguard Peer DNS Tunnel setting has 10.10.10.1

I will keep monitoring in case issue resurfaces..

[ho1Aetoo]

[rnix]

That is strange. Maybe I will do full reset soon just to start from scratch, and hopefully get rid of such oddities

[ho1Aetoo]

CTRL+F5 ?

maybe just a browser cache problem

[rnix]

I tried ctrl+f5 and private window (which should eliminate any caching problem) with no difference. This option is simply not there for my rt-n18u
I can instead use dns-forward-max=150 option you shared earlier and take another look once I go for reset route.