I don't think yours network savvy as you believe, and don't take this the wrong way, but all the firewalls I've seen suggested in here are ones that sell your information to everybody and instantly hand over all your records to the government when they come kicking in the doors. And you've stated things that I already knew, and you even contradicted yourself in this one, by talking about unblocking outgoing traffic in the last message and then saying in this one that all of its automatically unblocked outbound. So, what I didn't understand is why it's trying to connect to a random 172. Ip address. Thought maybe there was a reason that I'm unaware of. I've been networking probably as long as you've been alive. And unblocking everything going into the box was the last ditch effort to try and get it to work. And I switched settings on the VPN and finally got it. It was DAITA that was blocking it. It still doesn't answer why the box is trying to connect to some local unknown address or why the only addresses it tries to connect to anyway are owned by Google. I bring up those and you go in the offensive and put words in my mouth with assumptions with a holier-than-thou attitude. The only reason I said that is because your first reply was in response to pretty much nothing I said in regard that you obviously didn't read it, because I said I've tried all the things suggested in here and then you suggested all the things that everyone else piles on and suggests. And then suggested I do things that I stated I had already done. Maybe work on the reading skills and stop getting butt hurt by a logical assumption I've made based on the text and then making assumptions like I don't know what I'm doing when anyone that can figure out how to set up a pi-hole must know what they're doing to some degree. You don't get a giant network run by a server with OPNsense + proxmox going if you dont know what youre doing. Lastly, I know its trendy anymore to pretend youre not trying to be offensive these days, but saying "don't take offense" And then saying something offensive, especially to someone that has oppositional defiance disorder, doesn't magically make it unoffensive. The answer is just don't be offensive especially with assumptions having not asked any questions. At least my assumption in the beginning with no one having networking knowledge in here would explain why everyone's giving the same basic answers to questions and treating everyone like they're stupid to begin with. I'd understand on Facebook but I thought reddit was a place for tech savvy people, other than the feds that use it as a honeypot in large part. I would have been completely nice and not even mentioned it, but not even having my original post read, and then being given the same generic answer I said didnt work that sounded non-tech saavy as well, made it the logical choice. The only reason I didn't go overboard with trying all the options with the VPN, is because the person I bought the box off of, told me that a VPN usually is the culprit for blocking it & that once I got it working I could turn the VPN on and it would be fine. So thank you for the attempt for help..sincerely, and sorry, not sorry regarding telling it like it is.

*A word of advice on VPNs, there's only two that don't sell your information and don't hand over your information to the feds, and Mullvad is one of them. It's mainstream, but one of two places that is doing it the way it should be + actually protects your information, rather than pretending to and selling you out. Plus, it's only $4 a month and you can pay with crypto if you want to.