Technitium DNS Server

SmartDNS is an open-source local DNS server that sends client queries to multiple upstream DNS servers, measures the returned address candidates, and returns the fastest result to the client. It supports separate virtual DNS servers with different ports, rules, and clients; per-client rules based on IP or MAC address; domain routing; domain-specific address overrides; suffix matching for filtering; IPv4, IPv6, and DNS64; and cached, multithreaded asynchronous I/O. Its query and service protocols include UDP, TCP, DNS over TLS, DNS over HTTPS, DNS over QUIC, and DNS over HTTP/3, with optional SOCKS5 or HTTP proxy queries. The project supports Linux, Raspberry Pi, OpenWrt, Asus router firmware, Windows Subsystem for Linux, and Windows-related deployments, and provides build scripts for LuCI, Debian, OpenWrt, and Optware packages. It is distributed under the GPLv3 license.

AdGuard Home is a local DNS server that can be used as an alternative to Technitium in split-DNS homelab setups. In the described setup, local DNS records resolve a domain to a local reverse proxy at home rather than sending traffic to the public proxy and back through the internet.

Pi-hole is a network-wide DNS server and ad-blocking tool developed by the Pi-hole Team. It can run in Docker or on a supported Linux system, including a Raspberry Pi, PC, virtual machine, or NAS, and can serve as the DNS server for an entire network or individual devices. It blocks advertising and tracking domains before they are downloaded, including requests from mobile apps, smart TVs, and IoT devices. Pi-hole provides a web interface with query statistics, client activity, upstream-server information, query logs, local DNS configuration, and settings management. It includes a built-in DHCP server, group-based filtering, allowlists and denylists with regular-expression rules, automatically updated community blocklists, configurable privacy modes, and a REST API with built-in documentation. A VPN such as WireGuard can extend its DNS-based blocking to devices on mobile networks or public Wi-Fi.

CoreDNS is an open-source DNS server written in Go for DNS and service discovery. It uses a chain of plugins, with plugins available for Kubernetes service discovery, etcd, Prometheus metrics, query rewriting, zone-file serving, and cloud DNS providers such as Azure DNS, Google Cloud DNS, and AWS Route 53. It can be compiled with only the required plugins and is used in Kubernetes environments; the videos describe using it for in-cluster DNS with cross-cloud forwarding rules and DNS name rewrites so pods can address pods in other clusters. CoreDNS is a graduated Cloud Native Computing Foundation project licensed under the Apache License 2.0.

NetBird Self-Hosted is an open-source deployment of NetBird, a zero-trust networking platform for creating private networks that connect directly to servers and other peers through WireGuard. Its self-hosting setup uses an installation script and can deploy Traefik with automatic TLS, built-in local-user authentication through an embedded Dex server, and an optional reverse-proxy service for exposing resources on the NetBird network. A NetBird client can also operate as a routing peer for services on a Docker subnet, while access policies, remote DNS, NetBird SSH, identity authentication, and service exposure are managed through the platform.