At home I am using PiHole but “on the road” I also what a good solution like PiHole. So a few days ago I read that NextDNS is a good option and in some cases even better then PiHole. So that is, why I’m now here to get some opiniond from you gals and guys :)
Why not just a VPN towards your home? All benefits at once. Maybe some latency.
NextDNS has been excellent for me. Only “issue” I have had is that it doesn’t always play nice with wifi captive portals. I typically have to disable nextdns on my device, join, then re-enable.
I use PiHole and installed Wireguard on my RaspPi. Works really well, and I can bring the PiHole-functionality everywhere while easily toggle it on and off.
I’ve been using it for the past 4 years and it has been rock solid for me. I use the oisd list with some of the overlapping security lists disabled and it just works. I never get complaints from family members either. It’s enabled on my home network, iOS/MacOS/Linux devices and in Tailscale.
I use as as I don’t even want to bother hosting a PiHole, and honestly it works quite well. Set it as a DoT on Android and you have it outside from home without having to think about it.
its Pretty good actually. I use it most of the time. I also use quad9 and mullvade sometimes
Used it for a few months. Never had any problem but now moved to adguard DNS. Got a great deal for 5 years, way cheaper than nextdns when i pay yearly. Includes adguard adguard block, vpn and dns.
If both cost the same i would choose nextdns. Nextdns feels a little bit faster.
I dont like ControlD. The webui is a mess, for me personally. NextDNS webui is easier to understand.
Unless I’m grandfathered in or something (I haven’t heard of any price changes), ND is like $20 a year. Is AG like $5 a year or something? o.O
Yeah. $20 for a year but i bought AG for $35 for 5 years. I got adguard blocker, vpn and personal dns to boot. Its on sale on something. Im a cheap bastard.
But Nextdns is a bit faster on DNS side. If the price werent so cheap. I’d stick with nextdns.
I pay the $20 per year and use it as a backup for my local and vps wireguard/pihole installs. Works great and you can use custom local dns records for your Lan if you wish. Plus you can use it on android/ios without any extra software installs.
I like it, the interface is super easy to use and I like that you can put a suffix in the url to separate a device name for custom rules or filtering.
Fyi - you CAN use your pihole when you’re away from home. Overall high level steps are:
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Download PiVPN on the rPi
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Set up a client
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Download wireguard app on mobile
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Import config you generated in step 2
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???
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PROFIT!!!
Speed limited to home network upload speed am i right?
Wireguard can be configured to proxy specifically only any requests across the DNS and Encrypted DNS ports and protocols. It is extremely capable of being lightweight and not carrying all your traffic.
I dont understand that one bit but thats probably why my speed was slow when im connected to my home network through wireguard.
For example my mobile plan is around 100Mbps down and 30Mbps up. When im connected to my home network through wireguard. My mobile download speed crippled to my home network upload speed which is 50Mbps.
Is that normal? I read that its normal.
I don’t understand what you mean? My home network has fast download and upload speed. I have absolutely no issues with speed.
I mean. If my phone connected to my home network through wireguard, my phone download speed will be limited to my home network upload speed right since im connected to my home network?
Not sure if i explained that well. English is not my native language
Oh okay I think I see what you mean now. Your English seems fine!
Your download speed could be less due to the VPN having to tunnel in, and you’re also limited to the network speed you currently have on mobile while you’re not home.)
So yea it could be slower than your home network probably since you’re limited to current mobile data/mobile wifi speeds and the extra latency from tunneling back home. This is in terms of download speed.
I’m not sure if you are limited to your home network’s upload speed. I guess potentially? Conceptually it makes sense. You’re probably right. Good question.
For me person it’s fine since I don’t download shit on my phone. I just use it for calls, texting, and web browsing.
I probably explained this terribly so if anyone else could chime in, that would be great :-)
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I’ve been using NextDNS for about 1.5 years as a paid customer.
Sometimes I run into these weird connection issues where nothing loads. I turn off private DNS on Android then turn it back on and pages start loading again. I haven’t had this issue on iPadOS and Windows.
I don’t know if it’s an Android thing or a NextDNS thing.
I wish there was an easier way to enable/disable it on their website as sometimes you need to access a website blocked by your filters and it can be cumbersome to remove private DNS in Windows’ settings.
Other than that it’s worked well.
Using ND for 3y now, have not had your issue with loading. Pixel 8 Pro, graphene. Family is also on Pixels, stock, no issues. All on ND, of course.
I’m using it since a few years now across all our mobile devices and our home internet. It’s working great, if you ignore the occasional ‘can’t reach DNS’ problem with some access points. Apart from this I love the customisability and ease of use.
I host my own technetium (recursive DNS) server and have my phone set to always be connected to my network through wireguard. I have nextdns as one of my upstreams along with mullvad and a few others in case those don’t work.
@andylicious1337 its fine. But the free tier 300k limit might be tight for 2-3 devices. Personally I’ve been using https://github.com/sieusus/lilac-gateway-pihole, sort of a self managed pihole running on cloudflare and github cli.
Yes. And I’m using Tasker to automatically switch the Android setting to use Private DNS when not connected to my Wifi SSID. That way I have never used up the free usage of 300,000 queries.
