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Show HN: nextdns.io – A Combination of Cloudflare DNS and Pi-Hole

nextdns.io

51–60 of 151 posts

Re: Show HN: nextdns.io – A Combination of Cloudflare DNS and Pi-Hole

#51
post #2

We've been working super hard on nextdns.io, a cloud-based private DNS service that gives you full control over what is allowed or blocked on your devices. Here is a few things you can do with it: - Block malicious websites, trackers, ads, and more by combining the most popular blocklists out there, all updated in real-time (100+ lists to choose from). - Set your own privacy requirements: you decide what type of logs…

I tried using it. I'm in India, and while Cloudflare and Google DNS consistently resolve in 60-70ms, nextdns takes between 400-700ms for the first resolution and consistently 250ms for the same query repeated (I presume it caches the results?) Should I assume you've gotten a huge spike in traffic because of this HN post? If yes, I don't mind trying again in a few days, but unless things improve, I wouldn't be able to…

It's not the spike, it's probably a combination of:

- a routing imperfection (this things need to be tweaked over time).

- the fact that we didn't deploy our PoP in India yet (coming this month).

Can you talk to us on the chat if you have some time? It would help to do some debugging.

Re: Show HN: nextdns.io – A Combination of Cloudflare DNS and Pi-Hole

#52
post #47
post #2

We've been working super hard on nextdns.io, a cloud-based private DNS service that gives you full control over what is allowed or blocked on your devices. Here is a few things you can do with it: - Block malicious websites, trackers, ads, and more by combining the most popular blocklists out there, all updated in real-time (100+ lists to choose from). - Set your own privacy requirements: you decide what type of logs…

I am in the East Coast with 100Mbit fiber: dig @5.182.208.203 google.com ;; Query time: 390 msec

Could be a routing issue (this things need to be tweaked over time). Can you talk to us via the chat on the website so we can debug?

Re: Show HN: nextdns.io – A Combination of Cloudflare DNS and Pi-Hole

#53
post #23

I don't understand why any privacy conscious person would choose a hosted service instead of self-hosting your own solution. Implementing the whole thing (modulo the anycast IP, which is the only thing I did not use) is easy. I have a docker-compose file which does the whole stack: 1. Unbound DNS which provides DNS-over-TLS service at port 853. It forward request to my local pihole's 53 port. 2. Pihole forward reques…

I don't know how you can say that's easy with a straight face. You just mentioned at least 5 software projects and/or technologies that a large bulk of people have never heard of.

Re: Show HN: nextdns.io – A Combination of Cloudflare DNS and Pi-Hole

#54
post #38
post #2

We've been working super hard on nextdns.io, a cloud-based private DNS service that gives you full control over what is allowed or blocked on your devices. Here is a few things you can do with it: - Block malicious websites, trackers, ads, and more by combining the most popular blocklists out there, all updated in real-time (100+ lists to choose from). - Set your own privacy requirements: you decide what type of logs…

What about client subnet?

Right now it's disabled for everyone, it will be supported with an option to disable it.

Re: Show HN: nextdns.io – A Combination of Cloudflare DNS and Pi-Hole

#55
Nice. Congrats on the release! If you're allowing custom profiles with custom block/whitelist domains it means you're holding a database on this thing and doing lots of queries on requests. Will your product be able to scale with more users since it's free? How are you keeping all this logic from affecting your latency? I'm curious of technical implementations that's all.

Re: Show HN: nextdns.io – A Combination of Cloudflare DNS and Pi-Hole

#56
post #2

We've been working super hard on nextdns.io, a cloud-based private DNS service that gives you full control over what is allowed or blocked on your devices. Here is a few things you can do with it: - Block malicious websites, trackers, ads, and more by combining the most popular blocklists out there, all updated in real-time (100+ lists to choose from). - Set your own privacy requirements: you decide what type of logs…

I tried using it. I'm in India, and while Cloudflare and Google DNS consistently resolve in 60-70ms, nextdns takes between 400-700ms for the first resolution and consistently 250ms for the same query repeated (I presume it caches the results?) Should I assume you've gotten a huge spike in traffic because of this HN post? If yes, I don't mind trying again in a few days, but unless things improve, I wouldn't be able to…

Disclaimer: I run a competing service.

India is difficult. I run our anycast network and we have coverage in India but I look forward to improved routing there in the future with additional transit providers.

It seems nextdns is announcing exclusively with Vultr: https://bgp.he.net/net/5.182.208.0/24

Which is not in India: https://www.vultr.com/locations/

Re: Show HN: nextdns.io – A Combination of Cloudflare DNS and Pi-Hole

#57
post #44

Nice. DNS has grown notoriously complex over the years and it is hard work to run a standards compliant service. Congratulations. A few suggestions: - Auto-detect OS and suggest specific setup instructions right on the landing page? - The website goes blank when I block third-party JavaScript from loading. Can you please see if you can fix that? - simplednscrypt has been handy for me to DoT/DoH/DNSCrypt with AdGuard…

Thanks! > Auto-detect OS and suggest specific setup instructions right on the landing page? It should already pre-select your OS tab on my.nextdns.io on the Setup page? If that's not the case, then it's probably a bug. > The website goes blank when I block third-party JavaScript from loading. Can you please see if you can fix that? Weird, we will have a look. > simplednscrypt has been handy for me to DoT/DoH/DNSCrypt…

Minor nitpick, but > is universally used to indicate quoted text, and you've reversed the meaning here.

Re: Show HN: nextdns.io – A Combination of Cloudflare DNS and Pi-Hole

#58
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Motivations: like most tech startups, scratching your own itch :) Funding: Free during beta, then freemium with low pricing tiers (something like free up to 500,000 DNS queries a month, then $0.99/month). We will tweak later based on actual costs at scale, but it will follow this logic.

I wouldn't know if 500k is a little or a lot.

Seems like it's close to what a 'normal' household would consume: https://support.opendns.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/2201126...

Re: Show HN: nextdns.io – A Combination of Cloudflare DNS and Pi-Hole

#59
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! > Auto-detect OS and suggest specific setup instructions right on the landing page? It should already pre-select your OS tab on my.nextdns.io on the Setup page? If that's not the case, then it's probably a bug. > The website goes blank when I block third-party JavaScript from loading. Can you please see if you can fix that? Weird, we will have a look. > simplednscrypt has been handy for me to DoT/DoH/DNSCrypt…

Minor nitpick, but > is universally used to indicate quoted text, and you've reversed the meaning here.

Edited, thanks!

Re: Show HN: nextdns.io – A Combination of Cloudflare DNS and Pi-Hole

#60
post #53
post #23

I don't understand why any privacy conscious person would choose a hosted service instead of self-hosting your own solution. Implementing the whole thing (modulo the anycast IP, which is the only thing I did not use) is easy. I have a docker-compose file which does the whole stack: 1. Unbound DNS which provides DNS-over-TLS service at port 853. It forward request to my local pihole's 53 port. 2. Pihole forward reques…

I don't know how you can say that's easy with a straight face. You just mentioned at least 5 software projects and/or technologies that a large bulk of people have never heard of.

A self-host solution by its nature requires some investment in the techniques and would take greater effort (that's how most open source projects make money).

Look, I'm not trying to sell my solution here. This is Hacker News, I'm simply share my setup and hope can help someone who's capable and willing to invest the time. I understand this is not for everyone, that's why I suggest nextdns.io as hosted solution in the README.

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