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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

#71

Post by shadoxx »

Glad Technitium is getting its day on HN! I've been using this for around six months now, did a deployment on my home network after rebuilding it from scratch. Multiple zones, forward zones, hosting SOA for internal domains, DNSSEC. Hands down the BEST modern DNS infra you can deploy if PiHole doesn't fit all of your needs. I'm running it on a Raspberry Pi 4 alongside my Unifi controller with zero issues!

Using Technitium on your local network is like rolling your own Route 53 management console internally. I hate to use that comparison, but I think that'll hit more for some users on HN! If you need that kind of fine grained control, or if you just don't want your hand held on DNS, that is why you would choose this over PiHole.

Thank you to the Technitium team for giving us such a great product! Even if your name is hard to spell.

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

#72

Post by shadoxx »

ameshkov wrote: post #58
riddley wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started on PiHole and moved to AdGuardHome and eventually landed on Technitium. I have a large home network and it does auto reverses and multiple record types that the others didn't. I really like Technitium.

Could you please explain what auto-reverse and multiple record types mean? The reason for asking is to learn what's missing from AG Home/DNS and maybe adding it in the future.

Auto-reverse means Auto RDNS zone creation. Where you're usually trying to translate hostnames to ip addresses, a reverse lookup translates an ip address to a hostname.

So, if I have an internal record, record.example.com @ 192.168.1.2, I can query the server to ask "Hey, who is at 192.168.1.2?" and the server would reply with "record.example.com". This works by creating not only the example.com zone, but also a "1.168.192.in-addr.arpa" zone with the proper mappings. Technitium server will ask you to create the zone if it doesn't already exist when you create an A record for a zone.

https://knowledge.digicert.com/constellix/standard-dns/rever...

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

#73

Post by greenshackle2 »

egberts1 wrote: post #64
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.

DNS over HTTPS is using port 443 because it's... HTTPS. Are you blocking that too?

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

#75

Post by NoPicklez »

shadoxx wrote: post #72
ameshkov wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please explain what auto-reverse and multiple record types mean? The reason for asking is to learn what's missing from AG Home/DNS and maybe adding it in the future.

Auto-reverse means Auto RDNS zone creation. Where you're usually trying to translate hostnames to ip addresses, a reverse lookup translates an ip address to a hostname. So, if I have an internal record, record.example.com @ 192.168.1.2, I can query the server to ask "Hey, who is at 192.168.1.2?" and the server would reply with "record.example.com". This works by creating not only the example.com zone, but also a "1.1…

Sorry, for my benefit as well, I understand what you've said from a technical standpoint.

Do you mind elaborating on what this means real world in terms of what that allows you to do?

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

#76

Post by mianos »

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.

Trying to post a listing but cloudflare seems to block me from saying anything but one line.

  VSZ   RSS
 275156560 151048
using lxc info Memory 276.90MiB Swap 16.00KiB

wow, that is a PITA, just trying to be helpful. Anyway, seems a lot of virtual but next to no real memory.

edit: as I said, aside from the scary VM size, very small. I only have 60 local hosts though.

edit: ps, the dhcp/dns integration first class. I have a few networks and run a couple of dhcp namespaces and it all works perfectly, with multiple routes distributed. I could never get that going with piHole. I was running dndmasq for years before that.

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

#77

Post by autoexec »

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…

It's good to be skeptical, but we should also welcome newcomers since that provides resiliency in cases where well established options shutdown or get subverted themselves. I might not run this on my own network personally, but it seems worth keeping an eye on. It's good having options, especially open source options. This project may even result in improvements being made to PiHole or AdGuard!

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

#78

Post by rad_gruchalski »

cookiengineer wrote: post #5
poisonborz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want to reach your self-hosted services within your network easier.

How about using the etc hosts file? (Had to remove the slash to pass through cloudflare block)

> How about using the etc hosts file

Works for one computer, doesn’t scale.

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

#80

Post by accrual »

ProllyInfamous wrote: post #68
accrual wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bloc…

That's a slick solution, thanks for sharing! Pihole resource needs are pretty low so I could see easily running several in parallel on a Docker host.
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