[Aside] Various DNS stuff

No point to this post except as a reference for my future self. I wanted to mention some of the links here to a colleague of mine today but couldn’t remember them. Finally had to search through my browser history. Easier to just put them here for later reference. :)

Via this Pi-Hole page – OpenNIC and DNS.Watch. Both are for uncensored results etc., with the former having additional TLDs too. Sadly neither supports edns-client-subnet so I can’t really use it. :( If I query www.google.com via one of these I get results that are 150-220ms away. Same query via Google DNS or OpenDNS gives me results that are 8ms away!

I hope to implement DNSCrypt-proxy on my Asus router this weekend (time permitting). Seems to be straight-forward to setup on Asus Merlin as there’s an installer and also available via AMTM. My colleague is currently using DNSCrypt.nl as the upstream resolver, but he also mentioned an alternative he hopes to try.

It’s funny there’s a lot more talk about DNS encryption these days. I happened to get on it coz I got the Asus Merlin running at home again recently and also coz of the CloudFlare DNS announcement. I’ve generally been in a geeky mode since then and checking out things like Pi-Hole etc. And just the other day I read an Ars Technica article about DNS encryption and today it turns out my colleague implemented DNSCrypt at his home just today morning.

Something else I hope to try – dunno where though – is the Knot DNS Resolver.

Lastly, totally unrelated but as a reference to myself – I didn’t know there was an open source version of the Synology OS called XPEnology, and I didn’t know of these picoPSU power supplies. So cool! Also, Netgear R7800 seems to be a good router to keep in mind for the future.