from Hacker News

NextDNS Is Out of Beta

by jrnkntl on 5/26/20, 7:25 PM with 153 comments

• by Urgo on 5/27/20, 12:38 AM

  Since pretty much all the reviews here are glowing I'll offer up an alternative.

  If you want what they are selling, then it does work quite well.. but there are drawbacks.. one primarily.. that made me end up not using it for my whole network and only on my ipad when I don't want ads in a game.

  As mentioned in other comments, you can whitelist domains, but unlike the whitelist in ublock or something in your browser, this means you need to know the exact ad server domain/domains. For example if I want ads on for certain websites to help support or troubleshoot my own site then I'm unable to do that or if the wife needs to see an ad in her game to get gems, you have to dig through the logs to find out what ad server its calling.. or set up another profile to not block any ads.

  In short, you're not whitelisting the domain you're visiting, you need to whitelist every domain that website might call too. Perhaps most people are okay with then and if so then ignore :)

  Another thing I didn't like, which I mean makes sense, but in order to label a device you need to run their client. I had set up nextdns on my router which worked great, but if I wanted different devices to have different rulesets they each needed to run the nextdns client. So good luck knowing which smart device is calling what because you're not going to be installing the client on your Alexa. One other downside of this which honestly I probably could have fixed was their client broke WSL network connections so on my primary device I ended up operating in logged out mode.

  That said, I might end up giving it another shot at some point but running on a very limited set of rules rather then the pretty comprehensive rulesets I had enabled. I did like how it blocked the device telemetry calls.. perhaps that is all I need to block and then handle everything else client side.

  Hope this helps someone!

• by kuon on 5/27/20, 10:32 AM

  If you are wondering (as I did) how they can know what is your DNS resolver, they simply makes the webpage load some JS from a random host, like "https://853af2kklyt-dda385.test.nextdns.io/". Of course, as this host cannot be cached anywhere, their DNS are hit by your DNS resolver, thus they can know the IP of your DNS resolver. In my case as I have a DNS server at home, it displayed the name of the AS of my provider.

• by Brajeshwar on 5/27/20, 3:32 AM

  NextDNS is nice and easy to use for us, a family -- non-technical spouse, two kids with access to devices for schools, 'games & stuff'. I ran Pi-Hole on a Raspberry Pi 3 for about a year and it is one of the best ever there. I wanted something simple and something I can just clicky-click.

  Been testing NextDNS for quite a while and I like it. Will continue as long as it serves what I'm looking for.

  On a different note, unlike most of us, my wife and kids are worried that they can no longer see those 'interesting and useful' ads. They go on to those ads, spend long minutes browsing from one to the other, propelled by ads. My kids discovers 'these amazing games' via the ads. It is a different world out there.

• by greatjack613 on 5/26/20, 8:50 PM

  Really happy to hear this. I have loved next dns since its start, not only for their product, but also due to the fact is is a clean sustainable business. No need for ads, a generous free tier, and a cheap full featured paid tiered. This is the way I would like to see most SaaS's go

• by foob4r on 5/26/20, 10:59 PM

  That's awesome and I've tried nextdns and loved it. But - and this is just me - I just don't trust anyone to delete my logs or not log in the first place.

  That's why I'll probably not move off of my pihole

• by netcyrax on 5/26/20, 9:01 PM

  But missing the point. If I am worried about privacy from cloud players, why to trust another cloud player?

  I would setup my own Pi-Hole if I wanted true privacy.

  Missing something?

• by bad_user on 5/26/20, 9:14 PM

  This is cool.

  NextDNS appears to implement DNS over HTTPs (DoH) and Firefox ships with it as an option, next to Cloudflare.

  UPDATE — Took it for a test drive:

  * Logs are concerning, but look good for optimizing the traffic and notice odd communications; I already noticed telemetry sent by my browser that I switched off

  * Ad blocking seems to work, not as good as desktop uBlock Origin, but I'll take anything for my iPhone

  * Latency is around 30 - 100 msec, which seems a bit high? (server I connect to seems to be 400 km away)

• by troquerre on 5/27/20, 3:33 AM

  One cool thing about NextDNS is that they also support the Handshake DNS protocol. It’s an alternative root DNS that supports new TLDs while maintaining compatibility with existing ICANN TLDs https://handshake.org

• by buildbot on 5/26/20, 9:22 PM

  I trialed nextDNS based on other people talking about it here, and have really liked it - it’s really awesome to have an always on, dns-over-https solution for every device. I think it’s really worth the 20$ per year, just for the slick ui and not having to manage a pihole somewhere.

• by dewey on 5/26/20, 10:12 PM

  What's the difference between using the macOS app or just setting the DNS on a router level? Just the attribution to a specific device in the dashboard? I couldn't figure that out by reading the (actually very well written) FAQ.

• by algorithm314 on 5/27/20, 8:19 AM

  Hello an other alternative is https://libreops.cc/radicaldns.html . They also offer DNS over https and TLS https://libredns.gr/

• by 7ewis on 5/26/20, 11:36 PM

  Saw this when it first came out, never tried it until now.

  Used it for around an hour and I've already made 2,000 requests and 15% of those were blocked. Can definitely see myself going over 300,000 requests (free monthly allowance) but it's looking great so far so would be happy to support it.

  Currently use AdGuard on my phone, looks like this does almost everything AdGuard does (stats, logs, blocklists) with the added benefit of the processing being done elsewhere.

• by firloop on 5/26/20, 8:40 PM

  Signed up for a year as soon as I got the email announcement. Love NextDNS and excited to see where they go — particularly would love some sort of time-based scheduling or API for rule automations.

• by pvg on 5/26/20, 8:21 PM

  A year to the day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20012687

  Making this a perfect snee-less dupe!

• by pwdisswordfish2 on 5/27/20, 2:38 AM

  "Privacy Policy

  1. We do not (and will never) sell, license, sub-license or share any of the data submitted directly or indirectly by our users with any person or entity."

  This does not cover metadata. For example, NextDNS analyzes the data submitted directly or indirectly by the user and makes a note, "This user [something private]"

  If NextDNS sells, licenses, sublicenses or shares that metadata they are not violating this Privacy Policy.

  If NextDNS acquires data from a third party (e.g., data brokers) that identifies NextDNS users, then that is not "data submitted directly or indirectly by our users" and they are not violating this Privacy Policy if, e.g., they pair that data with NextDNS metadata and store, sell, license/sublicense or share it.

  This Privacy Policy also does not cover the event of NextDNS itself or a successor selling ads or ad services. If that ever happens, it would not violate this Privacy Policy.

• by slenk on 5/27/20, 4:06 AM

  Just a perspective - 300k DNS queries is not very much. 1 full day of home use + work (most DNS goes over VPN for that) and I am at 130k queries. So you'll get a nice little trial, but don't expect it to last very long, imo

• by PascLeRasc on 5/26/20, 8:56 PM

  "Try it now. No sign up required"

  I love that phrase. This looks like a fantastic service!

• by leokennis on 5/27/20, 9:35 AM

  Love this service. Gladly paying a subscription now. It’s like a pihole without having to worry about keeping it running, updated etc. So ideal for not-super-techy people like me.

  One feature request if the team is reading along a pause button to disable blocking for 1/5/15/60 minutes.

• by bretthopper on 5/26/20, 10:09 PM

  I really wanted to like and use NextDNS but my latency was ~200ms vs maybe 10-40ms for my ISP resolver. I'm fine with paying a bit of a latency price for the extra features and privacy, but not that much. And I'm located in Toronto, not somewhere remote.

• by nicolas_ on 5/26/20, 11:21 PM

  I've been using NextDNS for the past few months and it's a fantastic product!

  I don't need Blockada on my phone anymore and I can block whatever I want at the router level instead of doing it on each devices.

  Keep up the good work!

• by admax88q on 5/26/20, 10:15 PM

  What I don't get about DNS, is why doesnt every device just run its own recursive caching resolver. Why ask ISPs and hotspot providers to resolve your requests?

  What would be the downside outisde of corporate networks?

• by AnonC on 5/27/20, 10:30 AM

  Where is the pricing information? I couldn't find it on the homepage or in the help page (even searching there doesn't help). Even the article on 300K free queries a month [1] doesn't have anything related to pricing.

  Where is the announcement that it's out of beta? I don't see that in the homepage either. What am I missing?

  [1]: https://help.nextdns.io/en/articles/3962038-what-happens-aft...

• by 29athrowaway on 5/27/20, 6:35 AM

  DNS is not an encrypted protocol.

  The people routing your DNS traffic can inspect it and even tamper it (e.g.: your ISP) even if you pick DNS servers other than the ones provided by your ISP. Your privacy is not guaranteed.

  DNS over HTTPS/DNS over TLS is encrypted and may offer better privacy, if you trust them, that is.

• by m-p-3 on 5/26/20, 10:19 PM

  I'm a fan of their service, and because most browsers support DNS-over-HTTPS natively I can put the configuration right into my browser settings and have the same level of DNS filtering even when I'm outside of my home network without VPN.

• by 0xbkt on 5/27/20, 10:31 AM

  How is this actually different from using Cloudflare DNS (1.1.1.1)?

  For ads, I already use AdGuard.

• by coldcode on 5/27/20, 11:31 AM

  If we all use enough of things like NextDNS then all ads will go away. Oh wait, suddenly all websites except those with a paywall will exist. No more news reports of any kind. No more free services. Nothing but a few sites that sell T-shirts to struggle to survive. I don't like the present web either, but somehow people have to make money. Unless we build in an infrastructure that easily allows me to pay you to run a business online, I fail to see how in the long run this total blockage of ads is a benefit for all.

  Of course we live in HackerNewsLand, where the rest of technologically illiterate humanity pays by watching ads so that we don't have to.

  Somehow we have to use technology to find a way to balance the needs of those who are online serving us content/information/etc with a less irritating and horrific way to pay for it. Without a solution for that, the future is going to be a lot less diverse and a lot more frustrating, although in a different way.

• by porker on 5/27/20, 7:29 AM

  If you're in the UK and your family like watching Channel 4's 4oD, I had to whitelist *.fwmrm.net for it to play.

  Otherwise 4oD think you have an ad blocker enabled and the video refuses to start.

• by Gimpei on 5/26/20, 9:56 PM

  I've been using NextDNS and really enjoy it. I've found it a lot easier to manage than pihole. Only issue I have is that it doesn't seem to work with the Economist.

• by elktea on 5/26/20, 11:00 PM

  I had it on my phone for a while, sadly it breaks URLs in the twitter app because it was blocking the analytics redirect. Nice service otherwise

• by k__ on 5/26/20, 10:44 PM

  I like it, but it's sad that I have to run an extra VPN app on my Android because Xiaomi doesn't allow me to configure private DNS.

• by NicoJuicy on 5/27/20, 10:47 AM

  I can think of an entire niche that could grow nextdns into the public domain.

  It only needs one feature :)

  Is anyone of nextdns reading this? Possibility to contact?

• by drcongo on 5/27/20, 9:45 AM

  I absolutely love NextDNS and I don't think I've ever been so pleased for a product to start charging me.

• by Brajeshwar on 5/27/20, 5:20 AM

  Request to NextDNS, if you are listening, can we have servers in the Southern Part of India too? Thanks.

• by tipoftheiceberg on 5/27/20, 5:25 AM

  Am I “grandfathered in” if I was using NextDns during beta?

• by 3ln00b on 5/27/20, 8:57 AM

  I hope they introduce MFA for the web config console

• by 1f60c on 5/26/20, 11:36 PM

  I’ve just set it up, and so far I quite like it.

• by gigatexal on 5/27/20, 6:16 AM

  I don’t want “in depth analytics” from anything really especially a DNS provider. How about a truly non-logging, ad-blocking, DNS provider that does DNSSec?

• by jart on 5/26/20, 11:44 PM

  Consider reading IETF docs for how things like DNSSEC were intended to be used.

• by ycombonator on 5/27/20, 1:30 AM

  For me Pihole on hosted vps has less latency than NextDNS

• by ck2 on 5/26/20, 11:28 PM

  recently discovered this opensource hosts solution for android

  https://github.com/AdAway/AdAway

  almost everything obeys hosts on android, works great on lineageos