SecureDNS will shutdown on 30th of April 2020 | Hacker News Reader

SecureDNS will shutdown on 30th of April 2020

securedns.eu

76 pointspost-factum25 comments

I didn’t find any information about this service’s infrastructure and presence. There isn’t much information about its operations either. It seems like a single person project, which is something people shouldn’t rely on especially if it’s going to help you connect online (or don’t tell common people to rely on these).

With bigger providers like Google and Cloudflare providing free DNS and having presence around the world (to reduce latency), it’s not going to be easy to compete for others.

Recently I switched from Cloudflare to NextDNS. I like the fact that NextDNS has a closer presence in many locations (for lower latency) and also has several ad blocking lists you can subscribe to. It’s close to having a Pi-Hole on the cloud and close to having a non-customized uBlock Origin on the cloud. The web interface to customize this is easy to use. The only thing I don’t like is that it’s not a simple DNS configuration if you aren’t interested in additional protections or ad blocking lists. It requires an app for every supported platform. I don’t recall seeing a set of IP addresses published upfront by NextDNS, like how Google DNS and Cloudflare do. The pricing will be another factor to consider whenever it exits beta.

NextDNS does have regular DNS servers so you don't have to have an app, though you do have to register your device IP so it's not a good option for mobile use.

Well, if you have an Android device with Android 9+ you can use built-in DNS-over-TLS: https://blog.cloudflare.com/enable-private-dns-with-1-1-1-1-... It works for both Wi-Fi and LTE and it's how I use NextDNS on my Pixel.

Sadly DNS-over-TLS wasn't working for me on some networks (probably filtered or the port blocked), while DNS-over-HTTPS was passing through seamlessly.

I wish Android supported both natively.

Wait, I've always wondered how do the custom DNS services work if your IP changes every 12/24h? And if you're begin CGNAT so you share your IP with hundreds of users?

If you have a dynamic IP and use regular DNS, NextDNS allows you to ping them on IP change (via an app or a call to their API via a simple curl)

On your cellphone, there's an App that creates a fake vpn

If you're using DNS over HTTP or TLS, you can add an identifier to your requests, so NextDNS knows who you are even when you change IP addresses or you are behind a NAT or CGNAT.

Ah, nice. I didn't realize DDNS-like client apps can be used to maintain DNS client profile info with a regularly updating IP address. Cool!

Check out the NextDNS FAQ [1] and navigate to the question titled “What is Linked IP?”

[1]: https://nextdns.io/faq

I tied my hostname to my NextDNS account, so that was quite easy to manage as I already keep that one up-to-date through DNS-O-Matic on my router.

You have to ping it from your machine periodically so it can pick up the new IP, either manually or automatically, or you can use existing dynamic DNS. As for really wide NAT... dunno. May just be incompatible if there's more than one user in your block.

You can give them your dynamic CNAME and they can follow you.

Nextdns does have published DNS ips:

45.90.28.245 45.90.30.245

Thank you. I didn’t find it published prominently, like it is with Google DNS, Cloudflare DNS and Quad9 DNS. The choice of this address is a huge contrast to the others I mentioned, where those are very easy to remember.

What's the reason for the shutdown? Not enough donations? Too many/few users?

The bit about "No logs are kept regarding DNS related traffic, nor will I turn any over." leapt out at me, but I honestly have no idea.

Perhaps the canary died.

Or it got too expensive. Both good possibilities

A real pity. Users can check out https://nextdns.io for a feature-complete alternative. I've had a great experience with them.

I tried it. it is a bit like pi-hole as a service. very nice, and very full featured. I have started noticing more apps using their own DNS servers though. in my home lan I get a lot of blocked requests to 1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8 which are my primary DNS, but only coming from my pi-hole.

I maintain a small list of DNSSEC providers that I’ve validated as secured enough. But most of you gateway hobbyist would need to use Bind 9.16+ to securely relay your DNS queries.

https://egbert.net/blog/articles/public-nameservers-with-dns...

Unbound, which is a lot easier to configure, is also a good alternative: https://nlnetlabs.nl/projects/unbound/about/

That's a shame. I've been using his great service for two years now. For rotation I also use https://blog.uncensoreddns.org/ which may be a suitable replacement for anyone else also using SecureDNS.

I see a lot of comments mentioning NextDNS. How is it compared to OpenDNS?

OpenDNS was bought by Cisco in 2015. The website looks very different from how it used to be before that, and seems to be targeted at enterprises. It seems like one would have to dig in deep to find the erstwhile service and management of filters that it had offered.

So far I like it, it's been a great supplement to uBlock Origin and it was easy to setup.

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