DnsServer

Technitium DNS Server is a free, open-source DNS server you can run on your own computer or home server. DNS is the system that translates website names like example.com into the numerical addresses computers actually use to connect. Normally your internet provider handles this for you automatically, but running your own DNS server gives you control over how that translation happens and who can see it.

The most practical reason people run this is privacy. When you use your internet provider's default DNS service, your provider can see every website name you look up. Technitium supports sending DNS queries over encrypted connections using protocols called DNS-over-TLS, DNS-over-HTTPS, and DNS-over-QUIC, which prevent your provider from seeing or manipulating those lookups. These encrypted protocols can also point to external providers like Cloudflare or Google if you prefer, keeping your traffic private even from the upstream resolver.

A second common use is network-wide ad and malware blocking. You can point the server at one or more block lists of known ad or tracking domains, and any device on your network that tries to reach those domains gets blocked automatically without installing anything on the device. This works for phones, smart TVs, and other devices that do not support browser extensions.

The server comes with a web-based admin panel accessible from a browser. It runs on Windows, Linux, macOS, and Raspberry Pi, and a Docker image is available. Setup is described as taking about a minute with no configuration required to get basic operation running.

Beyond home use, it can also function as an authoritative DNS server for organizations that host their own domain names, with support for zone management, DNSSEC security signing, clustering multiple server instances, and integration with DHCP. The feature list is extensive and covers advanced topics used in enterprise networking environments. The project is developed by Technitium Software and is licensed under open-source terms.