dnscrypt-proxy/README.md

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Build Status

dnscrypt-proxy 2

A modern client implementation of the DNSCrypt protocol.

dnscrypt-proxy 2.0.0beta1 is available for download!

Installation

How do I install DNSCrypt?

You can't. Because DNSCrypt is just a specification.

That specification has been implemented in software such as unbound, dnsdist, dnscrypt-wrapper and dnscrypt-proxy.

dnscrypt-proxy is a flexible DNS proxy. It runs on your computer or router, and can locally block unwanted content, reveal where your devices are silently sending data to, make applications feel faster by caching DNS responses, and improve security and confidentiality by communicating to upstream DNS servers over secure channels.

Setting up dnscrypt-proxy

  1. Modify the dnscrypt-proxy.toml configuration file according to your needs.
  2. Make sure that nothing else is already listening to port 53 on your system and run (in a console with elevated privileges on Windows) the dnscrypt-proxy application. Change your DNS settings to the configured IP address and check that everything works as expected. A DNS query for resolver.00f.net should return one of the chosen DNS servers instead of your ISP's resolver.
  3. Register as a system service (see below).

Installing as a system service (Windows, Linux, MacOS)

With administrator privileges, type dnscrypt-proxy -service install to register dnscrypt-proxy as a system service, and dnscrypt-proxy -service start to start it.

Done. It will automatically start at boot.

This setup procedure is compatible with Windows, Linux (systemd, Upstart, SysV), and macOS (launchd).

Other commands include stop, restart (useful after a configuration change) and uninstall.

Current status/features

The current 2.0.0 beta version includes all the major features from dnscrypt-proxy 1.9.5 (support for dnscrypt v2, synthetic IPv6 responses, logging, blocking, forwarding and caching), with improved reliability, flexbility, usability and performance.

Features dnscrypt-proxy 1.x dnscrypt-proxy 2.x
Status Old PoC, barely maintained any more Very new, but quickly evolving
Code quality Big ugly mess Readable, easy to work on
Reliability Poor, due to completely broken handling of edge cases Excellent
Security Written in C, bundles patched versions from old branches of system libraries Written in standard and portable Go
Dependencies Specific versions of dnscrypt-proxy, libldns and libtool None
Upstream connections using TCP Catastrophic, requires client retries Implemented as anyone would expect, works well with TOR
XChaCha20 support Only if compiled with recent versions of libsodium Yes, always available
Support of links with small MTU Unreliable due to completely broken padding Reliable, properly implemented
Support for multiple servers Nonexistent Yes, with automatic failover and load-balancing
Custom additions C API, requires libldns for sanity Simple Go structures using miekg/dns
AAAA blocking for IPv4-only networks Yes Yes
DNS caching Yes, with ugly hacks for DNSSEC support Yes, without ugly hacks
EDNS support Broken with custom records Yes
Asynchronous filters Lol, no, filters block everything Of course, thanks to Go
Session-local storage for extensions Impossible Yes
Multicore support Nonexistent Yes, thanks to Go
Efficient padding of queries Couldn't be any worse Yes
Multiple local sockets Impossible Of course. IPv4, IPv6, as many as you like
Automatically picks the fastest servers Lol, it supports only one at a time, anyway Yes, out of the box
Official, always up-to-date pre-built libraries None Yes, for many platforms. See below.
Automatically downloads and verifies servers lists No. Requires custom scripts, cron jobs and dependencies (minisign) Yes, built-in, including signature verification
Advanced expressions in blacklists (ads*.example[0-9]*.com) No Yes
Forwarding with load balancing No Yes
Built-in system installer Only on Windows Install/uninstall/start/stop/restart as a service on Windows, Linux/(systemd,Upstart,SysV), and macOS/launchd
Built-in servers latency benchmark No Yes

Planned features

  • New super simple (to copy&paste), extensible format for servers parameters: "stamps"
  • Offline responses
  • Local DNSSEC validation
  • Flexible logging
  • DNS-over-HTTP2 (DoH), the successor to DNS-over-TLS
  • Support for the V1 plugin API
  • Real documentation

Pre-built binaries

Up-to-date, pre-built binaries are available for:

  • Dragonfly BSD
  • FreeBSD/x86
  • FreeBSD/x86_64
  • Linux/arm
  • Linux/arm64
  • Linux/mips
  • Linux/mips64
  • Linux/mips64le
  • Linux/x86
  • Linux/x86_64
  • MacOS X
  • NetBSD/x86
  • NetBSD/x86_64
  • OpenBSD/x86
  • OpenBSD/x86_64
  • Windows
  • Windows 64 bit