Hi!
This is more consulting than asking fo technical help, because I know how to modify DNS.
The main thing is:
I want to set up DNS filtering on my OpenWRT router. How secure/private NextDNS? Do you recommend it? Or better use AdguardDNS?
It is basically abandonware these last few years. Still works but i would avoid it, just go with Adguard (better lists too).
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If you want to archieve a network wide DNS filter, I think setting up a pihole or the like would be better than using external DNS filtering services.
One reason is that free tier NextDNS allows 300k unique queries per month, not so much if you share it across your home network.
Another reason is that Pihole offers very similar functionalities but you can self host and have full control over the data and config. Depends on your router, you maybe be able to install pihole on the router as well, if you want to.
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It is secure but it is on maintenance mode for years. I don’t recommend Adguard due to their love for leaking DNS.
As we mentioned earlier, our DNS service utilizes Anycast routing. That’s why your traffic can be routed through unusual locations like Mexico. Please, check out this article, it contains detailed information about this topic.
Speaking about Google and Cloudflare DNS, you can see them, for example, in a DNS leak test, because we use recursive DNS servers. This helps a lot to improve the connection speed. Also, the details on this topic can be found in this article, for example.
So, according to Adguard support below picture is normal.
I suggest you go with Control D
It is not DNS leak, If a domain delivers SERVFAIL, AdGuardDNS fallback to Cloudflare / Google.
The other resolvers don’t do this though.
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There should be something wrong with your setup then.
The client only communicates with AdguardDNS even when the fallback occurs.
I can’t find any cons. Just because it doesn’t recieve feature updates doesn’t mean it’s bad.
The latency is the same than Cloudflare, I don’t have to selfhost and the filterlists are good
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avoid why? feature updates doesn’t mean better
It is still fine to use, especially if you get good performance based on your location.
But also NextDNS no longer has working support or interacts with the community, plus it has stayed behind a lot in features.
They just had an update in the past few months. I agree it’s slow coming, but to call this “abandonware” is a stretch.
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Yeah, I’m interested to hear what features are lacking from NextDNS, the technology doesn’t change that much that fast.
Also not sure how Adguard has better lists when they have most of the same lists available.
NextDNS very recently added dark mode to their web interface so they’re definitely not doing nothing.
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I had a billing issue with them recently, and they just straight up… ignored me. Multiple times. It’s been weeks. They claim no support for non-enterprise users, and they clearly mean that, no exceptions.
It seems they have generally updated the UI. They also added the ability to duplicate profile settings (finally), as well as being able to filter “filter lists” into categories. Definitely not nothing.
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Seems like it makes two identical profiles with 300k limits for each?
This is enough for me to not use it and not recommend it to others too…
The 300k limit is per account not per profile. Yes, it creates identical profiles which is very nice as I use multiple profiles with similar configurations and there was no way to easily transfer all my settings to each profile (like specific TLD’s being blocked).
I was using next dns premium for 3years and 2years of free before i never encountered any issue as such and recently trying out controld just on trial did not pay for.
But i did not like controld as such the interface is too clumsy and does not hold up the to nextdns which is really good.
But yes the only issue i find is sometimes logs get repeated while checking.
I will check controld again after 2-3months if they change anything and btw controld has a heavy website. Does not have live log preview. And many more.
If you are using openwrt i really don’t think you can use nextdns in free mode 300k is too less.
With 6-8 devices like pc phone tab mac tv…