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Technitium DNS Server: Self host a DNS server for privacy and security

technitium.com

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Re: Technitium DNS Server: Self host a DNS server for privacy and security

#61

Post by lfmunoz4 »

AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #56

Hate to ask this, but, I've become jaded. Who is behind this software and what's their motivation for it? PiHole is very simple in that regard, it was created by some dude to fill a niche and has grown into a reasonably robust community which should be reasonably resilient to outside attacks (someone sneaking in a change which adds a "feature" which exfiltrates and sells my data). AdGuard also is a very known company…

If you look at sponsors that might answer your question. Someone is using the software in their product and making money so they would sponsor the developers, probably nothing more to it than that. Think open source can be a way for multiple companies to pull their resources and build software that they both need.

Re: Technitium DNS Server: Self host a DNS server for privacy and security

#62

Post by [deleted] »

AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #56

Hate to ask this, but, I've become jaded. Who is behind this software and what's their motivation for it? PiHole is very simple in that regard, it was created by some dude to fill a niche and has grown into a reasonably robust community which should be reasonably resilient to outside attacks (someone sneaking in a change which adds a "feature" which exfiltrates and sells my data). AdGuard also is a very known company…

[deleted]

Re: Technitium DNS Server: Self host a DNS server for privacy and security

#63

Post by bluejekyll »

ErneX wrote: post #19
Alifatisk wrote: post #2

Isn’t self-hosting a dns server kind off pointless if you are the only user? Like doesn’t that make you unique to tracking?

Not at all, I have multiple sites I need to reach locally that each have their own domain on my local network, DNS is the perfect solution for that.

Have you registered these domains? I’ve seen a lot of companies use “internal” domains that they don’t register and then are surprised when names they didn’t register end up resolving unintentionally to something external.

Re: Technitium DNS Server: Self host a DNS server for privacy and security

#64

Post by egberts1 »

aws-user wrote: post #54

malware and other spying apps (like your television) are just adopting DNS over HTTPS (DoH) and bypassing whatever local DNS server you have deployed on your network, pihole and such are quickly becoming irrelevant.

Thats why you block 53/udp and 53/tcp ports in your home gateway IP forwarder.

Insidious things, tsk tsk.

Re: Technitium DNS Server: Self host a DNS server for privacy and security

#65

Post by zzyzxd »

Alifatisk wrote: post #2

Isn’t self-hosting a dns server kind off pointless if you are the only user? Like doesn’t that make you unique to tracking?

- You can have multiple upstream DNS servers. Don't have to always query one single vendor.

- Local caching reduces upstream queries significantly, making it much harder for upstream to profile you.

- Encrypt DNS traffic for incompatible devices.

Re: Technitium DNS Server: Self host a DNS server for privacy and security

#66

Post by Bowes-Lyon »

aws-user wrote: post #54

malware and other spying apps (like your television) are just adopting DNS over HTTPS (DoH) and bypassing whatever local DNS server you have deployed on your network, pihole and such are quickly becoming irrelevant.

This DNS server supports DNS-over-TLS, DNS-over-HTTPS and DNS-over-QUIC among others, so it can’t be bypassed.

Re: Technitium DNS Server: Self host a DNS server for privacy and security

#67

Post by KomoD »

magicalhippo wrote: post #46
mianos wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went from piHole running in a container to this. All those weird spinners on youtube and unexplained confusing issues went away. This thing is awesome. The functionality is massive. It is like going from Openwrt to mikrotik. The only thing I find disturbing is, being a .net app, htop shows it using 100s of gigs of ram. I don't know what is going on with that, as it runs well and does not add any load to the host. A…

So how low can you go? I'm running PiHole on some small SMBs with 1GB RAM.

Would be interested to know as well, looked around and couldn't find any minimum requirements listed anywhere

Re: Technitium DNS Server: Self host a DNS server for privacy and security

#68

Post by ProllyInfamous »

accrual wrote: post #48
outcoldman wrote: post #43

Hosting own DNS Server at home that blocks some domains freaks me out. I have never run it, so don't know. But comparing to just running AdGuard on my macOS, there are some times, that website would not open or behave without AdGuard being turned off. It is easy to do on my local macOS, but in case of using AdGuard as DNS Server on my home network - that will require more steps. Also, even if you run AdGuard as DNS o…

I think it's just a tradeoff. I run Pihole and it does occasionally block things that I need, but it's rare. When it happens I log into the dashboard, look at what was recently blocked, and permanently unblock it if needed. On the plus side, fewer to no ads on all devices including mobiles.

For a sole user, yours is definitely a great way to economically utilize a single PiHole at home.

A suggestion for tho$e with multiple users: set up multiple PiHoles on your same network, then have "blocking levels" which each user can set up, e.g: 192.168.0.2 x.x.x.3 x.x.x.4 x.x.x.5 x.x.x.n

My DHCP auto-issues the "lowest level of blocking" PiHole to any client not specifying their own DNS (only 7 rules, mostly blocking pagead2 and doubleclick). Phones all point to a phone-specific local PiHole IP (which allows them to do phone-ier things). From there, users can block more ads simply by increasing the DNS IP by x.x.x.+1 [until shit stops working for them, then bump down 1].

For malingering DNS resolution issues, I'll sit down with the user/client and help them "massage the blocks" between x.x.x.n , but this is rare after the initial week or so of setup.

This also allows individual clients to entirely bypass your PiHoles, simply by them manually setting their DNS to x.x.x.1 [i.e. their router's IP].

----

YES I know that you can have a single PiHole resolve differently based on client IP, but my above solution allows for a much-simpler "levels of DNS protection" that most non-technical users can understand/modify, themselves. It is not inexpensive =D

Re: Technitium DNS Server: Self host a DNS server for privacy and security

#69

Post by m3047 »

Alifatisk wrote: post #2

Isn’t self-hosting a dns server kind off pointless if you are the only user? Like doesn’t that make you unique to tracking?

Self-hosting allows you to block trackers at the DNS level. =) Depending on your level of hands-on you can block rentable infrastructure that trackers use and whitelist the apps which coincidentally also rent compute in that space. You can also use resolution telemetry to synthesize PTR records so that reverse DNS works for assets in the the cloud.

In order to accomplish those things I rely on Response Policy Zones and Dnstap, features which I don't see listed for this server. Nonetheless it does have filtering capability and decent coverage of features important to the average internet user, based on their listed features.

[I give away the RPZ / Dnstap stuff on GitHub, and I use BIND.]

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