How To Enforce Google Safe Search And YouTube Restricted Mode On Your Network

Updated: 3 Dec 2025

With the release of Technitium DNS Server v5, a new feature called ANAME resource record has been introduced. ANAME resource record implementation is similar to the IETF draft with respect to its core functionality that allows adding a CNAME like functionality to the zone root. Essentially, ANAME is similar to CNAME except that the authoritative DNS server resolves the A or AAAA records by itself and returns them.

The new release also adds Conditional Forwarder feature that can be combined with the ANAME feature to enforce Google's Safe Search or YouTube's Restricted Mode.

To configure Google's Safe Search, you need to add a new "google.com" Conditional Forwarder zone with "Use This DNS Server" option enabled. The "Use This DNS Server" option tells the DNS Server to forward all the queries to itself so that you do not need to configure any other DNS server as a forwarder. This option is useful in scenarios like the current one where you just need to override a few records for a particular zone but still wish that the other records in the zone to be resolvable as usual.

Add New Conditional Forwarder Zone

Once you have added the zone, you need to add a CNAME record that points "www.google.com" to "google.com" and another ANAME record that points "google.com" to "forcesafesearch.google.com". Check the screenshot below to know how the records should look like.

Enforcing Google Safe Search

You can now test this by clicking on the DNS Client tab and querying for "www.google.com". Now open "www.google.com" in your web browser and try doing a search and notice the Safe Search option on the top right corner.

Similarly, to configure YouTube's restricted mode, you need to add a new "youtube.com" Conditional Forwarder zone with "Use This DNS Server" option enabled. Once the new zone is added, you need to add a CNAME record that points "www.youtube.com" to "youtube.com" and another ANAME record that points "youtube.com" to "restrict.youtube.com". This will enforce "Strict Restricted Mode".  To enforce "Moderate Restricted Mode" you need to point your ANAME record to "restrictmoderate.youtube.com" instead. Once you have configured the records, they should look as shown the screenshot below.

Enforcing YouTube Strict Restricted Mode

To enforce restricted mode for YouTube mobile app, you need to ensure that the domain names "m.youtube.com", "youtubei.googleapis.com" and "youtube.googleapis.com" too resolves the same way as explained above. For "m.youtube.com", add a "m" CNAME record similar to "www" record in the same forwarder zone. For the others, create a new Conditional Forwarder zone for "googleapis.com" and configure it similar to the "youtube.com" Conditional Forwarder zone with a ANAME record that points to "restrict.youtube.com" and add CNAME records for them.

You can now test this too with the DNS Client tab by querying "www.youtube.com". You can open "www.youtube.com" in your web browser and check if the restricted mode is working by searching with any keyword.

If you wish to apply the same config to other domain names of the same service then you can use the Zone Alias DNS app which you can install from the Apps section on the DNS admin web console. Using this app, you can create one or more alias to apply the Conditional Forwarder zone config to other domain names. 

For example, if you wish to apply the "google.com" forwarder zone to all the other Google domain names like "google.co.in", "google.co.uk", etc. then configure the Zone Alias app for it listing all the domain name you wish it to apply for and the same zone setup would work for all of the aliases too.

The Conditional Forwarder zone is quite useful that not only you can forward queries to one or more DNS providers by adding one or more FWD records, you can override records that you wish and have the zone resolve as usual for other records.

If you have any queries, do let me know in the comments section below. For any feedback or support do send an email to support@technitium.com.

Technitium DNS Server v5 Released!

I am really happy to announce the release of Technitium DNS Server v5. This version is a major upgrade with many new core features, a lot of memory and CPU optimizations, and multiple bug fixes done. Download the latest update now!

Technitium DNS Server v5

Technitium DNS Server is a free, open source software that can be used by anyone be it a novice or an expert user. The server aims to have a user friendly approach, providing an easy to use web based GUI, and with defaults that allow the server to run out-of-the-box.

The DNS server can be used to self host domain names, used as a local resolver on a desktop or laptop computer, or used as a DNS server for the entire local network. It supports many useful and powerful features like blocking domain names using block lists, overriding records for any domain, use forwarders or conditional forwarders with DNS-over-TLS or DNS-over-HTTPS, and host your own DNS-over-TLS or DNS-over-HTTPS service.

The DNS Server is cross platform and can run on Windows, Linux and macOS. It has small footprint and thus can run even on a Raspberry Pi.

Once you have used Technitium DNS Server, you will realize how powerful it is and how silly it is to rely on your ISP's DNS servers.

Conditional Forwarder Zone

Features that you may find interesting in this release:

• QNAME minimization support in recursive resolver for privacy.
• ANAME propriety record support to allow using CNAME like feature at zone root.
• Primary and Secondary zone support with NOTIFY implementation and zone transfer support. 
• Stub zone support that allows the DNS server to keep track of the name servers of the zone.
• Conditional Forwarder zone support which allows to configure multiple forwarders for a specific domain name with all protocol support including DNS-over-HTTP or DNS-over-TLS protocols.
• Ability to override records of a live domain name using conditional forwarder or stub zone. This allows you to easily implements things like forced Google safe search or YouTube's restricted mode.
• Concurrent querying with more than one forwarder allows to get fastest response from multiple forwarders.
• Option to change the DNS Server local ports for TCP and UDP protocols. 

Read the change log to know more in details about the latest release.

Conditional Forwarder Zone with Overridden Records For Google Force Safe Search

The DNS Server code has been optimized for CPU, memory and concurrency. The server now notably has a very small memory footprint which allows loading a couple of million blocked domain names easily via the blocks list URLs on a Raspberry Pi with just 1 GB RAM. The time it takes to load the blocked lists too has improved significantly.

The DNS server now internally uses a new ByteTree data structure which is a complete lock less implementation allowing concurrent threads to do read and write operations. This allows the DNS server to handle large amount of concurrent requests easily while also allowing it to update the cache data parallelly.

With the limited hardware that is available with me for testing, the DNS server was load tested on a machine with Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8700 CPU @ 3.20GHz on a 1 Gbps wired Ethernet network. The server could resolve more than 2 million requests per minute with an average 30% CPU utilization consistently for 3 hours. The client machine that was used to bombard requests however would peak out at 100% CPU preventing from adding any more load on the server for the load test. This update is supposed to fix issues in the previous version that caused the CPU to peak, failing to handle load more that couple of thousand requests per second.

Any comment or feedback is really appreciated and helps a lot in adding new features and fixing bugs. Do send your feedback or support requests to support@technitium.com. For any feature request or reporting bug, do create an issue on GitHub.

The DNS Server code is available under GNU General Public Licence (GPL) v3 on GitHub.

You can now make your contributions to Technitium by becoming a Patron and help in developing new software, updates and adding more features possible. Become a Patron now!

Technitium Mesh Released!

Technitium Mesh, a successor to the Bit Chat project, has been released and is available to download directly from the Mesh website.

Technitium Mesh

Introduction

Mesh is a secure, anonymous, peer-to-peer (p2p), open source instant messenger that provides end-to-end encryption with Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS). Mesh can be used on the Internet or on offline private LAN networks for private messaging, group messaging and file transfers. Mesh is based on Bit Chat and retains it core concepts but has some major changes.

Unlike Bit Chat, Mesh does away with centralized user profile registration based on email address. Instead, users now can create multiple local profiles that can be used simultaneously and require to use a generated User Id. This major change was decided based on many people unwilling to disclose their email address or accused Technitium of harvesting email addresses. To be clear, Technitium never used the collected email addresses provided during the profile registration process to even inform existing users that the Bit Chat project is closing its operations.

The generated Mesh User Id is required to be exchanged to initiate private chat and can be changed anytime to avoid previously used User Id from being abused by anyone to stalk or harass you. Even when joining a group chat, a new User Id is generated each time so that the User Id disclosed in group chat cannot be used to initiate a private chat invitation. This makes sure that you are in total control over who is allowed to initiate private chat invitations and when.

The User Id is generated using an algorithm that uses RSA public key linked to the user profile and a random number. This algorithm allows each peer to authenticate the other peer during the peer-to-peer connection process to ensure their identity.

Mesh also removes the use of BitTorrent trackers that were being used by Bit Chat. Using torrent trackers created connectivity issues since many ISPs around the globe use deep packet inspection to block BitTorrent traffic. This also affected Bit Chat since ISPs could not differentiate between both the applications and blocked any traffic that was found using torrent trackers. Instead, Mesh now completely relies on Distributed Hash Tables (DHT).

Mesh now allows creating anonymous profiles that use Tor Network. Mesh includes Tor binaries to allow the app to use Tor Network anytime its necessary. Anonymous profiles and peer-to-peer (p2p) profiles are the two type of profiles that are now available. Both the profiles are interoperable such that a p2p profile user can communicate with anonymous profile user using the built in Tor support. This interoperability means that you can have a group where both p2p users and anonymous users can join together. Anonymous profiles use Tor hidden service to accept inbound connection requests but use a new hidden service onion domain name each time the user logs in to the profile to avoid being tracked using the onion domain name.

Read more technical details on the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page.

Features

• Completely decentralized, peer-to-peer architecture that works even on offline private LAN networks. No centralized profile registration is needed.
• End-to-end encryption with Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS).
• Allows you to create anonymous profiles that use Tor Network.
• Multiple profile support allows you to create many profiles and use all of them simultaneously.
• Allows creating private chat and group chat with file transfer support.
• User profiles are stored locally using strong encryption protected by passphrase. 
• Works peer-to-peer with IPv4 as well as IPv6 networks.
• Automatic port forwarding using your router's UPnP feature.

Open Source

Mesh is open source and source code is available under GNU General Public License v3 on GitHub. The software code is made open source to increase confidence in the security that we intend to provide.

Alpha Version

Technitium Mesh current release is in alpha version. This means the software is not fully complete and will undergo major changes in its protocol or user interface design. There may be noticeable bugs which will be addressed with an automatic update. You are welcome to report any issues by sending an email to support@technitium.com. For any issues, feedback, or feature request you may create an issue on GitHub.

Further, you may like to read the original concept in this old blog post.

Analyzing DNS-over-HTTPS And DNS-over-TLS Privacy and Security Claims

DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) and DNS-over-TLS (DoT) are two new protocol options available for secure DNS transport. Of which DoH has been pretty controversial with strong opposition from notable people in the DNS community. There have been questions raised for even the existence of IETF DoH standard when DoT standard was already an option.

Firefox has builtin DoH support with Cloudflare DNS configured that is being rolled out as a default for all users in the USA. This has consequences of subverting local network policies of organizations or private networks. Firefox has announced a canary domain name that can be blocked locally to prevent Firefox to use DoH by default making the entire effort vulnerable to downgrade attacks.

There have been serious concerns raised about DoH as a means for centralization of the DNS infrastructure. There are only a few public DoH and DoT service providers and thus it attempts to centralize the DNS infrastructure. Sending a handful of DNS providers all your DNS traffic does not really improve your overall privacy. It is a trade-off that each user needs to decide on his/her own.

DNS is one important control planes in a network. It essentially allows network administrators to block content based on domain names making it quite useful tool in the arsenal. It is being widely used to provide content filtering services, parental controls, and to block known malware command and control. Its so popular that a lot of people install a locally running DNS server on their home networks to block Internet Ads using block lists.

Applications or devices using DoH by default will bypass all the local control measures configured by the network administrator. The argument for applications to use DoH is that it allows users to bypass censorship, and provide security and privacy. However, this might not be what the user expects without a consent.

But, are users of DoT or DoH really being protected? Lets first understand the default DNS-over-UDP/TCP (Do53), DoH and DoT protocols in technical terms.

Do53 is the core protocol that is used by the entire DNS infrastructure. By default all DNS queries use UDP protocol since it is more efficient for simple request/response queries. TCP is usually used only when the response is expected to be large enough to not be suitable for UDP. Do53 does not provide any security or privacy as anyone on network path can see all DNS requests and even manipulate responses essentially doing a man-in-the-middle attack. This has been exploited in many malware attacks that compromise routers and change DNS settings to use attacker's DNS server to spread further or to compromise users further. Many ISPs have also tried to hijack DNS to show advertisements when user enters a non-existent domain name in the web browser.

DoT protocol is really just DNS-over-TCP tunneled inside TLS. Thus it provides all the features from the core protocol with addition of on path security and privacy. DoT uses default TCP 853 port and thus is easy to block with any network firewall.

DoH uses HTTPS protocol to send and receive DNS data in wire format. This means that DoH server is really a standard web server with a back end web application reading the DNS requests and proxying them to a configured DNS server. DoH can also be directly supported by a DNS server using a built in web server. DoH, just like DoT, also provides on path security and privacy. Since DoH uses the same TCP 443 port that HTTPS uses, it becomes almost impossible to block it with a network firewall since firewall cannot distinguish between normal HTTPS traffic and DoH.

Since both DoT and DoH use TLS for security, they essentially look similar over network. In fact, if DoT is configured on port 443 instead of its default port 853, it too would become difficult to block with a network firewall. Thus the only benefit of DoH seems to be that it allows the service to be hosted using a standard web server where the same IP address and port is shared with multiple other HTTPS websites.

Even though both DoT and DoH claim to provide security and privacy there are multiple catches. Both DoT and DoH provide security only from client to the recursive DNS server thus they do not provide any end-to-end security. Client is essentially trusting a configured recursive DNS server.

Even when DNS requests are encrypted, you are still leaking domain names of website you visit due to TLS Server Name Indication (SNI) extension. SNI essentially allows a web server running on a single IP address to host multiple HTTPS websites. SNI extension includes the domain name of the website you visit so that the web server can use correct SSL/TLS certificate that is configured for that domain name. SNI thus can reliably be used as an option to block websites combined with DNS based filtering.

SNI extension is being upgraded to Encrypted SNI (ESNI) that will encrypt the entire SNI extension in the TLS request. But practically speaking, even when ESNI becomes generally available on all web servers and web browsers, it will take many many years before significant amount of HTTPS websites configure ESNI for their domain name. Its been more than 3 year now that free SSL/TLS certificates are available to be used by any website but still there are a lot of websites that do not have HTTPS deployed (link requires login).

Even when DNS request are encrypted and TLS ESNI extension is used, most websites can still be identified by the IP address they are hosted on. Thus privacy provided by all these measures is still inadequate.

What about DNSSEC? DNSSEC is designed to provide security such that a recursive DNS server can validate responses before responding to client requests. It does not provide end-to-end security as clients never really perform validations and rely totally on the configured recursive DNS server. Another issue with DNSSEC is that its not widely deployed with only a small percentage of domain names have it configured. Most popular websites on the internet still do not have DNSSEC deployed making DNSSEC not really useful for most end users.

With all these technical issues in mind, its clear that both DoT and DoH are not really safe to be used by people to bypass censorship. Anyone with serious concerns with privacy is better off using Tor Browser or use a decent VPN service.

DoT and DoH are still useful as they protect users from man-in-the-middle attacks by on path network attackers. DoH however is really designed with an aim to bypass local network policies. Both are capable from hiding your DNS traffic on private network or from ISP.

A better way for many people is to run their own local DNS server that does recursive resolution. Locally running recursive DNS server will cache most common name servers records which usually have long TTL values configured in days and only query them when records are required or expired. This prevents DNS queries from going to centralized networks and avoid getting logged on ISP DNS server. Having authoritative DNS servers support DoT by default will add much value to running recursive DNS servers as it will dramatically improve security and privacy over the network.

All major ISPs deploying DoT and major Operating Systems (OS) supporting DoT will significantly help improve privacy and security as well as maintain the decentralization. Newer Android mobile devices have already started supporting DoT. Once the entire ecosystem supports and deploys DoT, it will improve the current state that DNS is in.

Turn Raspberry Pi Into Network Wide DNS Server

Turn your Raspberry Pi into a network wide DNS server for security, privacy and blocking Internet Ads on your private network!

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+

With Technitium DNS Server version 2.2 release, it is now possible to run it on Raspberry Pi (Raspbian Stretch) using .NET Core and we have a single line automatic installer ready to make it easy to get it running.

Install DNS Server

Just connect to your Raspberry Pi using SSH and run the command below to install the DNS server:

curl -sSL https://download.technitium.com/dns/install.sh | sudo bash

You can install the software manually too if you do not wish to directly run the install script. You will need to first manually install .NET Core on your Raspberry Pi and then use these steps to install the DNS Server.

Once the installation is complete, open the DNS Server web console to view the dashboard and customize the settings.

Technitium DNS Server web console on Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+

Configure Your Router

To use it as a network wide DNS server, you need to configure your network router's DHCP settings and add your Raspberry Pi's IP address as a custom DNS server. You may also need to configure the WAN settings to override the default ISP provided DNS servers with your Raspberry Pi one. Check your router's manual for the configuration details.

Do make sure that your Raspberry Pi has a static IP address so that it does not change later causing issues with failed domain resolutions on the entire network. Also make sure to install heat sinks for your Raspberry Pi to prevent overheating issues since you will be running it round the clock.

If you have any queries or feedback, do comment below to let me know. You can also email your queries to support@technitium.com.

Quick And Easy Guide To Install .NET Core On Raspberry Pi

.NET Core is a cross-platform runtime available for x64 and ARM processors that can be used to run ASP.NET Core web applications and standalone .NET Core console applications on Windows, Linux and macOS.

Installing .NET Core is straight forward for most Desktop platforms with clear instructions available on the download website. However, many would find it trickier to install it on something like Raspberry Pi which uses ARM based processor. So, here is a quick and easy guide to install .NET Core 2.2 on Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ with the latest Raspbian that is based on Debian 9 (Stretch).

Connect to your Raspberry Pi using SSH and get started!

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+

Installing Dependencies

First you need to install a few dependencies required by the .NET Core runtime:

sudo apt-get -y update
sudo apt-get -y install curl libunwind8 gettext apt-transport-https

Installing .NET Core

Go to the .NET Core download page and download the Linux ARM32 runtime. Or you could just copy the download URL from there to use with wget like I did and follow these steps:

wget https://download.visualstudio.microsoft.com/download/pr/860e937d-aa99-4047-b957-63b4cba047de/da5ed8a5e7c1ac3b4f3d59469789adac/aspnetcore-runtime-2.2.0-linux-arm.tar.gz
sudo mkdir -p /opt/dotnet
sudo tar -zxf aspnetcore-runtime-2.2.0-linux-arm.tar.gz -C /opt/dotnet
sudo ln -s /opt/dotnet/dotnet /usr/bin

Now just enter dotnet on the command line to confirm.

Its Done!

Now you are ready to run ASP.NET Core or .NET Core console apps on your Raspberry Pi!

Configuring DNS-over-TLS and DNS-over-HTTPS with any DNS Server

The new DNS-over-TLS (DoT) and DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) protocols are available for enabling end user's privacy and security given the fact that most DNS clients use UDP or TCP protocols which are prone to eavesdropping, vulnerable to Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks and, are frequently abused by ISPs in many countries with Internet censorship.

Public DNS providers like Cloudflare & Quad9, have already deployed these protocols and web browsers like Mozilla Firefox has built in DoH support. However, most operating systems and applications do not support them but, end users can still use these protocols on their computer by installing Technitium DNS Server locally and configuring any DoT or DoH provider as a forwarder to bypass ISP's control over DNS.

Both these protocols are IETF standards and are equally secure considering the fact that HTTPS itself runs over TLS. However, both protocols have slightly different ideas and there are a lot of arguments between engineers over the reason why DoH protocol exists in first place when a superior DoT protocol exists that implements RFC 7766 guidelines. The argument of having DoH is more political since DNS requests over DoH look just like normal HTTPS traffic over port 443 and thus hard to stop unlike DoT running on port 853. This makes DoH protocol desirable to users in countries with Internet censorship.

In this post we will explore configuring both these protocols for any DNS server that you already have running on your network. Both these services require SSL certificates which can be obtained for free using Let's Encrypt certificate authority which is trusted by all major web browsers. You can configure Certbot for automatic Let's Encrypt certificate renewal or manually generate one using Get HTTPS For Free utility.

DNS-over-TLS (DoT)

DNS-over-TLS standard is specified in RFC 7858 which is very straight forward to implement. Essentially, the standard specifies to use the existing DNS-over-TCP protocol support, that most DNS servers already have and, add TLS to it. DoT support can be available as a addon feature in your DNS server software or you can use Nginx web server to enable it.

Nginx supports SSL termination for TCP upstream which I will be using to enable DoT to use with Technitium DNS Server. I am using Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS for this setup but, you should be able to do similar config on any Linux distro.

First install the nginx web server:

sudo apt-get -y install nginx

Now all you need to configure DoT is to copy the following stream config block in your /etc/nginx/nginx.conf file and save the certificate and key files to path given as in the config. Don't forget to update the upstream DNS server IP addresses to your existing DNS servers.

stream {
    upstream dns-servers {
        server    10.10.1.5:53;
        server    10.10.1.6:53;
    }

    server {
        listen 853 ssl;
        proxy_pass dns-servers;

        ssl_certificate            /etc/nginx/ssl/dot-server.crt;
        ssl_certificate_key        /etc/nginx/ssl/dot-server.key;

        ssl_protocols        TLSv1.2;
        ssl_ciphers          HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5;
        
        ssl_handshake_timeout    10s;
        ssl_session_cache        shared:SSL:20m;
        ssl_session_timeout      4h;
    }
}

Once done, reload nginx web server to finish the configuration:

sudo service nginx reload

DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH)

DNS-over-HTTPS standard is specified in RFC 8484 and is a bit different to implement since it uses HTTP protocol. The DNS queries are send in wire format as a HTTP POST method or as a base64 encoded HTTP GET parameter. Using GET method allows caching of the response which may be undesirable considering that the DNS protocol controls expiry using TTL values which may get overridden by a HTTP based cache server.

Technitium has released DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) open source web application that can be used with any DNS server. The ASP.NET 5 web application can be deployed on any supported platforms (Windows/macOS/Linux). Just follow the instructions on the project's GitHub page to get the DoH service running on your server.

And Its Ready!

You can now use the DoT service (dot.example.com:853) or DoH service (https://doh.example.com/dns-query) with any supported DNS client or as a forwarder with Technitium DNS Server.

If you have any queries or feedback, do comment below to let me know. You can also email your queries to support@technitium.com.

Blocking Internet Ads Using DNS Sinkhole

Technitium DNS Server is an open source software that can be effectively used to block Internet Advertisements (Ads), adware, and malware on your computer or your local network using publicly available block lists.

Combined with DNS-over-TLS and DNS-over-HTTPS, Technitium DNS Server provides a good level security and privacy from network level DNS attacks and from adware. This makes it a must have tool if you are a privacy and security conscious person.

Technitium DNS Server is cross platform and works on Windows, Linux or macOS.

Technitium DNS Server v2.0

How Does It Work?
The Ad blocking feature works using the DNS Sinkhole method. With this feature enabled, for all the blocked domain names, the DNS Server will respond with 0.0.0.0 IPv4 address and :: for IPv6 address making the Ads fail to load making the website you visit free from Ads. This can not only block Ads but also adware, malware, social networks, porn etc. based on the block lists you configure in settings.

On your computer, you need to install the DNS Server and configure your network adapter's DNS settings to use the locally hosted DNS server. Once this is done, you need to configure the Block List URL settings to start blocking Ads. Once the DNS Server loads the block lists, it would respond with 0.0.0.0 IP address for the blocked websites making them fail to load.

You may also install the DNS Server on any spare computer on your network and configure your home or office router with IP address of this spare computer as DNS server in DHCP settings. With this setup, all your computers and devices like mobile phones would use the installed DNS Server blocking Ads and malware domains on all devices without installing any additional software on them.

Configuring Block Lists
To enable Ad blocking, you need to configure Block List URLs in the settings. Known and popular block lists are already listed in the Quick Add drop down list from where you can just click and add those URLs.

Technitium DNS Server Block List Configuration

If you are not sure, just select the Default option from the Quick Add drop down list and a default set of block list URLs would get configured.

Once done, click the Save Settings button at the bottom of the page to save the changes and start the block list download background process. These configured block lists are automatically downloaded every 24 hours to keep the DNS Server blocked zone updated.

If you have the DNS server installed directly on your computer then don't forget to configure your network adapter's DNS server settings to 127.0.0.1 (for IPv4) and ::1 (for IPv6). Without these network configuration changes, the DNS Server wont get any queries to respond to and things wont work as intended.

If you setup the DNS server to be used on the network by all devices then do configure your router's DHCP config and set the IP address of the computer running the DNS server as the DNS for your network. By configuring the router's DHCP, you don't need to manually configure any of your devices on the network.

IPv4 DNS Server Network Configuration

IPv6 DNS Server Network Configuration

That's It!
Once the configuration is done, just check the Dashboard on the web console after a couple of minutes to see the number of blocked domains in the Blocked Zones widget. If there are too many block list URLs configured, it may take few more minutes for all of them to get downloaded and loaded.

If you have any further queries, do write them below as comments or send an email to support@technitium.com.

Configuring DNS Server For Privacy & Security

Technitium DNS Server is an open source tool that can be used for blocking Internet Ads using DNS Sinkhole, self hosting a local DNS server for privacy & security or, used for experimentation/testing by software developers on their computer. It works out-of-the-box with no or minimal configuration and provides a user friendly web console accessible using any web browser.

With the release of Technitium DNS Server version 1.3 which adds support for DNS-over-TLS & DNS-over-HTTPS forwarders, it is now a good solution to be used by anyone concerned with privacy & security for domain name resolution on their Internet connection for Windows 10, Linux or macOS.

If you are not clear about what DNS is then read on. Domain Name System (DNS) is a decentralized system that allows you to find out the Internet Protocol (IP) address of any website (like www.technitium.com). So, when you enter a website domain name into your web browser, the web browser uses DNS to find out the IP address of that website. Once the IP address is known, the web browser can then connect to the web server on that IP address using TCP/IP protocols and download webpages and other embedded resources to display on to your screen. DNS servers don't just store IP address records but also store different types of records like mail exchange (MX) records which tell email servers where to deliver email for the recipient user of a given domain.

DNS servers and client use UDP or TCP protocol to exchange requests and responses which are not encrypted. This allows anyone on the network to see those requests and even hijack requests by sending back spoofed responses. There have been many instances reported in media of DNS hijacking done by malware, hacked home wifi routers or even by many Internet Service Providers (ISPs). ISPs in certain places have been found to redirect users to "custom" search pages instead of Google Search or even blatantly injecting Ads on websites that are not using HTTPS security. In some countries, ISPs often use their DNS servers to block websites to enforce government censorship orders.

To mitigate these issues, DNS-over-TLS and DNS-over-HTTPS protocols have been developed and are currently available to be used by a few DNS providers notably Cloudflare, Google and Quad9. But, currently, no operating system, applications or web browsers have built in support for these protocols.

With Technitium DNS Server installed on your computer (or on your network), you can make all your applications indirectly use these DNS providers with the new secure protocols hiding all your DNS traffic from your ISP. Lets see how to configure the DNS Server to use these services to take control and secure domain name resolution on your computer or private networks.

Technitium DNS Server is not configured out-of-the-box with these settings since you have to make a choice yourself of which DNS provider to use. All public DNS providers have their own privacy policies that you must understand before choosing it.

Cloudflare privacy policy promises that DNS query logs are only maintained for 24 hours with not personally identifiable data. They also promise to not sell the data to 3rd parties.

Google's privacy policy claims to maintain a temporary log for 24 to 48 hours which contains user's full IP address details. And a permanent log which redacts the personally identifiable data. There are no details mentioned how this data is used or whom its shared with.

Quad9's privacy policy promises that they do not keep any logs but, only anonymized statistical data on specific domain names which contains things like domain name, timestamp, geolocation, total hits, etc.

Below is a list of DNS providers grouped by the protocol they support. You can configure one or more DNS providers as forwarders but they must use the same protocol.

DNS-over-TLS protocol providers:

• Cloudflare IPv4 {cloudflare-dns.com (1.1.1.1:853), cloudflare-dns.com (1.0.0.1:853)}
• Cloudflare IPv6 {cloudflare-dns.com ([2606:4700:4700::1111]:853), cloudflare-dns.com ([2606:4700:4700::1001]:853)}
• Google IPv4 {dns.google (8.8.8.8:853), dns.google (8.8.4.4:853)}
• Google IPv6 {dns.google ([2001:4860:4860::8888]:853), dns.google ([2001:4860:4860::8844]:853)}
• Quad9 Secure IPv4 {dns.quad9.net (9.9.9.9:853)}
• Quad9 Secure IPv6 {dns.quad9.net ([2620:fe::fe]:853))

DNS-over-HTTPS protocol providers:

• Cloudflare (https://cloudflare-dns.com/dns-query)
• Google (https://dns.google/dns-query)
• Quad9 Secure (https://dns.quad9.net/dns-query)

DNS-over-HTTPS (JSON) protocol providers:

• Cloudflare (https://cloudflare-dns.com/dns-query)
• Google (https://dns.google/resolve)
• Quad9 Secure (https://dns.quad9.net/dns-query)

To make the configuration quick, easy and error free, there is Quick Select drop down list available which lists all the above options. Just selecting the desired option in the Quick Select list will populate the settings automatically for you.

See these examples below to know how the configuration looks like:

DNS-over-TLS Using Cloudflare

DNS-over-TLS Using Quad9 For IPv6 Internet

DNS-over-HTTPS Using Cloudflare

DNS-over-HTTPS (JSON) Using Google

As you may have noticed, Cloudflare provides support for all three protocols. Not only that, it is possible to use Cloudflare DNS over Tor hidden service too! Technitium DNS Server v1.3 adds support for configuring proxy server which can of course be made to use Tor running on your computer and use Cloudflare DNS hidden service because WHY NOT?!

You just need to configure dns4torpnlfs2ifuz2s2yf3fc7rdmsbhm6rw75euj35pac6ap25zgqad.onion hidden service address as forwarder and since all hidden service requests over Tor network are inherently end-to end encrypted, you can use DNS-over-TCP protocol with it. Tor is not included with the software so you will need to install Tor separately and configure it as a SOCKS5 proxy.

This option hides your query from your ISP as well as hides your identity from Cloudflare. But seriously, if you are really that paranoid, just use Tor Browser for all your web browsing.

DNS-over-Tor Config For Cloudflare DNS Hidden Service

Once you have configured forwarders, make use of the DNS Client on the web console to test the setup by making a test query to "this-server". If everything is configured correctly, you will see the IP address for the test domain you entered inside the "Answers" section of the JSON formatted output.

Finally, to make all your computers and applications to use Technitium DNS Server, you need to configure it on your Ethernet or WiFi network adapter. You just need to setup loopback IP address (127.0.0.1 for IPv4 & ::1 for IPv6) as DNS Server in your network adapter settings as shown below:

IPv4 DNS Server Network Configuration

IPv6 DNS Server Network Configuration

For more queries, write comments below or send an email to support@technitium.com.

Technitium DNS Server v1.3 Released!

Technitium DNS Server is an open source tool that can be used for self hosting a local DNS server for privacy & security or, used for experimentation/testing by software developers on their computer. It works out-of-the-box with no or minimal configuration and provides a user friendly web console accessible using any web browser.

Technitium DNS Server v1.3

Version 1.3 adds following awesome new features:

•  DNS-over-TLS and DNS-over-HTTPS forwarder protocol support.
• HTTP and SOCKS5 network proxy support.

The DNS Server is cross platform and can be deployed on Windows 10, Linux or macOS (using .NET Core or Mono Framework). Read this blog post to learn how to run DNS Server on Ubuntu.

Nobody really bothers about domain name resolution since it works automatically behind the scenes and is complex to understand. Most computer software use the operating system's DNS resolver that usually query the configured ISP's DNS server using UDP protocol. This way works well for most people but, your ISP can see and control what website you can visit even when the website employ HTTPS security. Not only that, some ISPs can redirect, block or inject content into non-HTTPS websites you visit even when you use a different DNS provider like Google DNS or Cloudflare DNS. Having Technitium DNS Server configured to use DNS-over-TLS or DNS-over-HTTPS forwarders, these privacy & security issues can be mitigated very effectively.

Developers regularly use the hosts file for configuring an IP address for a domain under testing. However, using the hosts file is cumbersome at times and can only be used to resolve domain name to an IP address. With a fully configurable DNS server running on your local machine, you can configure not just simple A records (for IP address) but, also configure other types of records like CNAME or MX etc. This allow you to have more control and power when you want to do testing that simulates the exact configuration that you have running on production.

Technitium DNS Server is open source and available under GNU General Public Licence (GPL) v3 on GitHub.

Comments and feedback are things that help push new features and improve usability, and thus are most welcome. Send your feedback to support@technitium.com or write your comments below.