Something is up with NextDNS
Old lists, absent owners, frustrated users...
If someone came up to me and called me a shill for NextDNS, I would be ok with it. I have used their paid product for well over three years. I wrote about NextDNS last on December 29, 2022. In that article, I laid out my “must haves” when it comes to a DNS provider.
Must work 99% of the time without me having to worry about it
Must work outside of my home network
Must work well with my UDM Pro
Must be able to create local DNS domain redirects
Must be able to use updated blocklists
Must be able to whitelist domains
Must be able to see detailed logs
Must be able to block ads, malware, adult content, and TikTok
~ jmcglock.substack.com
And NextDNS checked all those boxes… Until now.
The truth is, I wonder if the project is still maintained by the creators. Romain Cointepas and Olivier Poitrey are the creators of NextDNS and have both worked at Netflix and Dailymotion. They did an amazing job creating a state-of-the-art DNS provider. The number of features packed into NextDNS is truly insane.
But it seems that the project has gone dark (at least temporarily). The last release I can find on GitHub is dated January 26, 2023.
Granted, this is the NextDNS CLI project and may not necessarily indicate anything.
The Energized List Issue
On January 18th, this year, I opened an issue on GitHub. As I was going through my blocklists, I noticed that ALL of the Energized lists were dead.
I really liked the Energized lists and used the Ultimate and Xtreme Extension (way overkill but…). User agreed that these lists should be removed especially since the lists were no longer being maintained. I am not sure exactly what happened with Energized lists, but their website is no longer active, and their lists lead me to the default nginx 404 page.
Back to my GitHub issue.
A user decided to create a PR to fix the issue. The PR was created on February 10th and it removed the Energized lists from NextDNS. March rolls around and still no response.
Last week, we finally decided to give up on getting this merged. Where is the NextDNS team?
Anyway, long story short. We never heard from the Devs and we never got this pull request merged. It’s a shame really.
My “Packet Loss” Issue
Over the last few weeks or so, I have had issues with my internet connection. It seemed to be very spotty and there seemed to be latency issues. Me being a NextDNS shill, I did not suspect for a minute that it was my DNS. After all, my UDM Pro clearly stated that it was an issue with my modem:
So, I would restart the modem, restart my UDM Pro, and restart my Unifi AP. Still, something seemed off. Yesterday, I decided randomly to spin up an AdGuard Home server on Oracle Cloud. I had some free Ampere instances and needed to get something going.
Setup is super easy. I will probably make an article about running AdGuard Home on Oracle Cloud soon.
After I got it set and ready to go, I changed the DNS provider in my UDM Pro and restarted. After the restart, I felt as if my internet was back to living its best life.
I know, I know, IT’S ALWAYS DNS! But it just didn’t seem like that could be the issue! As you can see in the UDM Pro logs above, I have not had any issues with my internet in the last two days. It feels snappy and I am getting full gig down.
The Summary and Closing
So, what happened NextDNS!? Why are your servers spotty lately? I can’t in good conscience recommend your product anymore :<
I did notice on Twitter that Romain Cointepas and Olivier Poitrey are working on a new project called “dns0.eu” which seems to be an open DNS provider for the EU. Kinda cool not gonna lie. Most of the functionality from NextDNS seems to be baked into the new product.
But at what cost. Is NextDNS officially over?
I am not sure. I hope they come back around and see that their user base wants NextDNS to succeed. We want the product to be supported.
Cheers,
Joe