Top 20 Best Open Source DNS Servers for (Linux / Windows). In this post, we will have a look at the top 20 best open source DNS servers for Linux and Windows. The fact that they are open source makes it easy to customize them depending on any network configuration.
What is DNS Server
Connecting with DNS Server is another way to connect online safely. Using one of these free and public servers quickens your internet speed and you’ll experience a much smaller chance of technical issues as well as much more responsive browsing.
A DNS server or name server manages a massive database that maps domain names to IP addresses. DNS servers or Domain Name System is a protocol or system that will take the domain names that you enter into a browser and translate or forward them into the IP addresses needed to access those particular websites. In geek terms, that’s called Resolution.
Below is the list of Top 20 Best Open Source DNS Servers.
Top 20 Best Open Source DNS Servers for (Linux / Windows)
1. Knot DNS
Knot DNS is a high performance authoritative DNS server. It supports all key features of modern domain name systems.
It provides essential DNS features like incremental zone transfers (IXFR), dynamic updates (DDNS), and response rate limiting (RRL). It also has more advanced features that include automatic Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) signing, dynamic A/AAAA/PTR records synthesis, and rapid on-the-fly reconfiguration.
This is a tool for users looking for performance, security, and stability on their networks.
2. PowerDNS
The PowerDNS nameserver consists of an authoritative server and a recursor which are offered separately.
The authoritative server answers questions about domains known to it. It doesn’t go out beyond its network to resolve queries about other domains. It stores discovery data in its database.
Meanwhile, the recursor, by default, does not know domains itself, but will always consult other authoritative servers to answer questions given to it.
PowerDNS was designed to serve both small and large domains. It is easy to set up and serves large query volumes on larger domains.
3. MaraDNS
With MaraDNS we have a small and lightweight cross platform open source DNS server. It is easy to configure as it only requires editing text configuration files.
It offers DNSSEC simple, comes with a long list of plug ins, and has tools that help improve the DNS server, as well as import data. It can store both IP records and corresponding reverse DNS lookup and PTR query records. It can be used as a master DNS server, and, with some caveats, as a slave DNS server.
This DNS server is secure and runs on both Windows and UNIX clones.
4. dnsmasq
dnsmasq is also a lightweight, easy to configure DNS forwarder with a small digital footprint. It is designed to provide DNS – as well as DHCP and TFTP – services to smaller networks or resource constrained routers and firewalls.
It can be configured to cache DNS queries to improve DNS lookup, Internet browsing and domain record resolution speeds to previously visited sites.
5. BIND 9
BIND is an abbreviation for “Berkeley Internet Name Domain.” This is because it was created in the early 1980s at the University of California at Berkeley.
This DNS server is used often in Linux servers and can effectively manage DNS cookies while also securing the server from DoS attacks.
Setup BIND DNS Server on Azure
Setup BIND DNS Server on AWS
Setup BIND DNS Server on GCP
6. NSD
Another choice of Top 20 Best Open Source DNS Servers for (Linux / Windows) is the NLnet Labs Name Server Daemon (NSD). It is an authoritative DNS name server. It was developed for networks where speed, reliability, stability, and security are of high importance.
It is ideal for Top Level Domain (TLD) implementations, DNS Root server, and networks that need a fast and optimized authoritative name server.
NSD consists of two programs: the zone compiler and the name server. The name server works with an intermediate database prepared by the zone compiler from standard zone files.
7. YADIFA
YADIFA was designed with the efficient management of large Internet zones in mind. It uses dynamic updates to automatically change domain name records and is capable of optimally handling multiple Internet zones.
It is small and light as well as RFC-compliant. It supports DNSSEC protocol and related operations which are carried out in real time.
YADIFA is a cross-platform solution that runs on Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Solaris.
8. pdnsd
pdnsd is a server designed for local caching of DNS information. It can significantly increase browsing speeds on broadband connections.
It was designed to be highly adaptable to situations where connectivity is slow, unreliable, unavailable or highly dynamic. This makes it ideal for use with Wi-Fi hotspots or dial-up internet.
pdnsd maintains a disk cache of queries that systems perform to ensure subsequent queries are served faster from the cache. It is can be used on personal Unix/Linux systems or at home with desktops or laptops.
9. Posadis
This powerful authoritative and caching DNS server supports IPv6 and is part of a suite of programs that supports graphical configuration and zone file management.
10. Pi-hole
Pi-hole is a Linux network level advertisement and Internet tracker blocking application. It acts as a DNS sinkhole and can be optionally configured as a DHCP server. It was intended for use on private networks.
As the name suggests, Pi-hole was designed for low-power embedded devices with network capability, like a Raspberry Pi, but can also be installed on Linux machines.
It can also block advertisements and trackers anywhere – on websites as well as on other devices like smart TVs and mobile devices. It uses lists of offending domains to compare DNS queries against and, when a match is found, refuses to resolve the requested domain.
11. djbdns
The djbdns DNS server is in fact software package consisting of 7 applications. It is a DNS implementation.
The server component includes solutions like a DNS resolver and cache, a black listing server and zone transfers.
The client component, meanwhile, includes the solutions for simple address from name lookup, simple text record from name lookup, and a mail exchanger lookup.
It was intentionally split during the design phase to reduce code size, eliminate complex daemon programs and easier debugging.
12. Eddie
Eddie Enhanced DNS server is an ideal tool for sites with distributed web servers. It is dynamic enough to cater to sites with complex and mixed architectures – including different operating systems.
It dynamically balances client domain name resolution requests across all sites, regardless of geographical locations.
13. AdGuard
AdGuard is a tool that was meant to make it easy to set up. It is used for content filtering, blocking ads, and preventing analytics systems from harvesting user data as they surf the Internet. It is powered by over 50 DNS servers that are spread across 15 locations on the globe.
It can even be implemented in a home to restrict access to children and underage users from accessing harmful websites or those with adult content.
AdGuard has reports on online activities – grouped by device or user – that are easy to understand.
14. Acrylic DNS Proxy
Another recommendation of Top 20 Best Open Source DNS Servers for (Linux / Windows) is Acrylic DNS Proxy. It is is an open source local DNS proxy that is designed for Windows operating systems. It helps improve computers’ performance by caching responses from DNS servers. It also helps fight unwanted ads with the help of custom HOSTS files that support wildcards as well as regular expressions.
Additional features that come with this tool include DNS caching, custom HOSTS files, support for DNS-over-HTTPS, as well as support for SOCKS 5 proxies.
Download Acrylic DNS Proxy here.
15. CoreDNS
CoreDNS is a DNS server written in Go and is flexible enough to be used in a multitude of environments. It has a selection of plugins to perform various DNS functions like Kubernetes service discovery, Prometheus metrics, rewriting queries, and serving from zone files.
It also has plugins for all major cloud providers including Microsoft Azure DNS, GCP Cloud DNS, and AWS Route53.
16. Technitium DNS Server
Technitium DNS Server is an open source authoritative as well as recursive DNS server. It is used for self hosting a DNS server for privacy and security. It works out-of-the-box with no or minimal configuration and provides a user-friendly web UI that is accessible using any modern web browser.
It can be used to configure Block List URLs that get daily updates automatically to block ads. It also supports DNS-over-TLS and DNS-over-HTTPS protocols for forwarders which allows for the use of popular public DNS resolvers like Cloudflare, Google, and Quad9 for privacy by encrypting DNS traffic and protection from man-in-the-middle attacks.
Download Technitium DNS Server here.
17. Dual DHCP DNS Server
Dual DHCP DNS Server is a self-integrated service that automatically adds DHCP shared hosts to a DNS server.
The DHCP server is useful when maintaining IP addresses manually is not feasible – in larger networks, for example. The DNS server, meanwhile, takes care of resolving hostnames to their corresponding IP addresses.
It runs on both Windows and Linux.
Download Dual DHCP DNS Server here.
18. Erl-DNS
The name Erl-DNS comes from the fact that it was written in Erlang. It is a complete open source name server solution.
This DNS solution is known for its fast query response times – gauged at 30-65 µs/response – and can be used as an authoritative name server. It comes with several storage methods for its zone data. Users can extend it easily using the Erlang module system.
19. Unbound
Unbound is a lean and fast recursive DNS resolver that can be used for validation and caching. It also incorporates modern features based on open standards.
Unbound supports DNS-over-TLS and DNS-over-HTTPS for communication encryption. It supports various modern standards that limit the amount of data exchanged with authoritative servers to make it more robust.
It runs on FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, macOS, Linux, and Microsoft Windows.
20. Trust-DNS
Trust-DNS is a DNS client, server, and resolver. It is written in Rust and was built to be safe and secure from the ground up.
This resolver supports many common query patterns which can be configured when creating the resolver. It is capable of using system configuration on Unix and Windows operating systems.
Top 20 Best Open Source DNS Servers for (Linux / Windows)
There is few reasons why we prepared the list of 20 open source DNS servers. One reason could be that you might want to change the DNS servers assigned by your ISP is if you suspect there’s a problem with the ones you’re using now. Another reason to change DNS servers is if you’re looking for better performing service. Other common reason to use DNS servers is to prevent logging of your web activity so that you can have a more private browsing experience. Lastly maybe you wan to consider Domain Forwarding, then consider GoDaddy.
Although almost all of the top 20 best open source DNS servers we have seen come with detailed instructions I would welcome you do to individual and professional research with regards to installation, configuration and monitoring of your chosen solution.
After all, we wouldn’t want to lower the security of the network or make it worse than the original one.
This tutorial intends to discuss on Top 5 Open Source DNS Servers that can be used For Linux and Windows. Because of the Open Source software, they are easy to customize and configure. Now stay with us for the rest of the article to get more information about DNS servers and what are the best open-source DNS server software.
- Top 5 Open Source DNS Servers For Linux and Windows
What is a DNS Server Used For?
For a simple explanation, we can say that a DNS server looks like a phonebook on the internet. When you browse the web and search for a website for example google.com, a DNS server’s job is to search and find the correct IP address for the website. With this option, you can access the website and use the information.
So DNS servers are responsible for answering the DNS (Domain Name System) queries.
Top 5 Open Source DNS Servers For Linux and Windows
As you can see DNS servers are so important and useful for us. Now you can proceed to the following steps and get familiar with the Top 5 DNS Servers that are open source and can be used for Linux and Windows operation systems.
Number 1 – PowerDNS – Open Source DNS Servers
PowerDNS is one of the Top 5 Open Source Dns servers that provides excellent performance and features for managing the DNS servers. The current releases of PowerDNS include:
- PowerDNS Authoritative Server: Users can easily manage their DNS Zones and Records with the authoritative server. It works with many different scripts like Java, Python, etc.
- PowerDNS Recursor: It is a component of PowerDNS that gets the necessary DNS information by querying Authoritative servers, and then returns the results to the client.
- DNSdist: It is a load balancer that can be used to distribute incoming DNS queries across multiple Authoritative servers or DNS resolvers. Also, it has amazing filtering and policy rules which are very useful to monitor the health and efficiency of their DNS infrastructure.
At this point, we provide a list that defines the key features of PowerDNS and makes it one of the most powerful DNS servers for Linux and Windows users.
| Benefits of PowerDNS |
| High Performance and Scalability |
| Flexible Backends |
| DNSSEC Support |
| Dynamic Updates |
| API Integration |
| Geo-Redundancy |
| Various Use Cases |
Also, PowerDNS is a great alternative tool to BIND. It is a full-featured software that has high performance and security.
Tips: You can find PowerDNS installation and configuration guides on the Orcacore website. Here you can see some of the PowerDNS guides:
PowerDNS in Virtualizor
Set up PowerDNS on Ubuntu 22.04
Install PowerDNS on AlmaLinux 9
Number 2 – Knot DNS Server
As described on the Official site, Knot DNS is one of the top 5 Open Source high-performance authoritative-only DNS Servers that supports all key features of the modern domain name system. It can serve TLS domains too. Knot DNS has amazing features, module extensions, and supported networking features.
At this point, you can see the following list that includes some of the amazing Knot DNS server key features.
| Knot DNS Server – Key Features |
| Primary and secondary server operation |
| DNS extension (EDNS0, EDE, EXPIRE) |
| UDP, TCP, and QUIC protocols |
| Zone catalog generation and interpretation |
| DNSSEC with NSEC and NSEC3 |
| Name server identification using NSID or Chaos TXT records |
| YAML-based or database-based configuration |
| Response rate limiting |
| Forward and reverse records synthesis |
Number 3 – dnsmasq DNS DHCP servers
dnsmasq is a simple tool that is used to configure DNS and DHCP for small businesses and networks. It can serve domain names that are only locally applicable and will not appear in DNS servers around the world. The DHCP server is combined with the DNS server and allows DHCP-assigned addresses to be properly resolved in the DNS.
Also, the main use of dnsmasq is for NAT in home networks.
Here is an example of dnsmasq installation and configuration on a Linux distro:
Install and Configure Dnsmasq on Ubuntu 22.04
Number 4 – MaraDNS Small Open Source DNS Server For Linux and Windows
MaraDNs is one of the Top 5 software that is Open Source and used for building DNS servers for your internet services. It is a simple and secure DNS server and has a good performance. MaraDNS includes two releases which are:
- maradns: It is s authoritative-only nameserver.
- Deadwood: It is a recursive name server.
Also, MaraDNS makes DNSSEC simple, offers you a long list of plug-ins, and has every tool to improve the DNS server, and import data. You can run MaraDNS on both Windows and Linux operating systems.
Number 5 – NSD – Name Server Daemon
NSD (Name Server Daemon) by NLnet Labs is one of the best authoritative DNS name servers for Linux and Windows. It is available for most operating systems and is popular for its security, speed, reliability, stability, and high performance.
Because of its high performance and speed, it is the best solution for DNS servers.
Also, it is available for free and open-source under a BSD license.
Conclusion
As you know, there are more DNS server software that you can use for managing DNS. Here we try to discuss on Top 5 Open Source DNS Servers For Linux and Windows operating systems. We try to provide more guides on DNS servers and their configuration on different platforms.
Hope you enjoy it. So What do you think about DNS servers? Which one you will use?
Do you have an idea or suggestion? Please comment for us and share your ideas.
Also, you may be interested in these articles:
Best Linux System Monitoring GUI Tools
Introduce the Best Web Hosting Control Panels
Introducing 5 Linux Mail Servers
What is MaraDNS
MaraDNS is a free open-source computer program written by Sam Trenholme.
MaraDNS implements the Domain Name System (DNS), an essential internet
service. MaraDNS is open source software: This means that anyone is
free to download, use, and modify the program free of charge, as per
its license.
People like MaraDNS because it’s small, lightweight, easy to set up,
and remarkably secure. It’s also cross platform — the program runs
both in Windows and in UNIX clones.
MaraDNS has a web page and blog at https://maradns.samiam.org.
MaraDNS’s Git tree is hosted at
GitHub,
GitLab,
Bitbucket,
Codeberg,
and
SourceHut
(Please use GitHub for bug reports).
ABOUT
MaraDNS is a small and lightweight cross-platform open-source DNS
server. The server is remarkably easy to configure for someone
comfortable editing text configuration files. MaraDNS is released under
a BSD license.
I initially wrote MaraDNS while I was a college student and a travelling
English teacher during the first 2000s decade.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, I have been actively adding new features
to MaraDNS, most notably the new coLunacyDNS service which uses Lua
to customize DNS replies.
Versions of some MaraDNS programs compiled as Windows binaries
(without needing Cygwin or another POSIX emulation library) are
in the folder maradns-win32/
Building MaraDNS
To build MaraDNS, one needs a POSIX system with:
- A POSIX compatible shell
- A POSIX compatible implementation of
make, which has the POSIX202X
feature of allowing a make target to have a/in it. - Other standard POSIX utilities (
awk, etc.) - A current C compiler which can support, via
stdint, 8-bit, 16-bit,
32-bit, and 64-bit sized integers. - A POSIX C library with both POSIX and Berkeley socket support.
(To build some of the documentation, the non-standard but widely
available unix2dos text conversion utility is used.)
Then, do this:
./configure
CC=cc # Change this to gcc/clang/tcc as desired
export CC
make
Note that most implementations of make will set $CC to cc if it’s
not already set, but the POSIX spec
says that the default value should be c99, a compiler which will not
compile MaraDNS. A POSIX program like MaraDNS will not compile with a
strictly ISO compliant C compiler (the POSIX system calls will fail to
compile). However, all of the C programs here compile with gcc,
clang, and tcc, and should compile with any reasonable POSIX C
compiler.
All of these are very standard tools which are included with the vast
majority of Linux and BSD distributions; packages usually have names like:
clang(which usesllvm) for the C compilerlibc-devfor the development C standard library, which will have socketsmakefor make; if one does not wish to use GNU make (the Linux standard),
other make implementations exist, e.g. https://github.com/samboy/maramake- POSIX compatible implementations of
sh,awk, and other utilities are
also almost always included as part of a Linux base install.
MaraDNS successfully compiles with gcc, clang, and tcc; it
successfully builds with GNU make, bmake, pdpmake (as long as non-POSIX
and/or POSIX202X extensions are enabled and CC has the value cc), and
maramake. The version of make used to compile MaraDNS needs to have
the command name make. MaraDNS compiles and runs with both Busybox
versions of the core POSIX utilities and GNU coreutils.
Supported OSes
MaraDNS is built and runs on Ubuntu 22.04 as of late 2022.
I currently use Ubuntu 22.04 to develop MaraDNS, both Ubuntu 22.04 and
Alpine Linux 3.14 to test that MaraDNS builds and passes all automated
regressions, and a Windows XP virtual machine to make the Windows
binaries.
Please use systemd
While MaraDNS does have scripts for starting up MaraDNS at system boot
time on sysvinit systems, these scripts are no longer fully supported,
since most major Linux distributions have moved on to systemd, which
is a lot better than the older sysvinit process for starting up the
MaraDNS related services.
While make install is only guaranteed to get MaraDNS to start up at
system boot time on Ubuntu 22.04, it should do the right thing in Rocky
Linux, Debian, RedHat, CentOS, Fedora, and other Linux distributions
which use systemd.
There is some scaffolding for getting MaraDNS to run without systemd.
There is a helper, duende, to make MaraDNS a daemon on systems with
classic *NIX style init. While, with systemd, it’s no longer needed
to use this Duende helper, I will keep Duende around for sysvinit and
some level of OpenRC compatibility. There are also shell scripts for
starting MaraDNS on sysvinit systems which may or may not work with
other init systems.
systemd handles the daemonization of the MaraDNS services the way
duende does (did?) on sysvinit and similar systems. The systemd way
is much simpler at the development level, since systemd now handles a lot
of complexity the old init systems forced networking services to handle.
Important note for Windows users
Users of Microsoft Windows are better off downloading a prebuilt Windows
binary: http://maradns.samiam.org/download.html (or, look in the
folder maradns-win32 here)
Be sure to download the file with the .zip extension.
Only Deadwood and coLunacyDNS binaries are provided.
Deadwood has passed Y2038 tests in Windows 10.
What is DNS
The internet uses numbers, not names, to find computers. DNS is the
internet’s directory service: It takes a name, like “www.maradns.org”,
and converts that name in to an “IP” number that your computer can use
to connect to www.maradns.org.
DNS is one of these things many take for granted that is essential to
using today’s internet. Without DNS, the internet breaks. It is
critical that a DNS server keeps the internet working in a secure and
stable manner.
MaraDNS’ History
MaraDNS was started in 2001 in response to concerns that there were
only two freely available DNS servers (BIND and DjbDNS) at the time.
MaraDNS 1.0 was released in mid-2002, MaraDNS 1.2 was released in late
2005, MaraDNS 2.0 was released in the fall of 2010, and MaraDNS had
a version number jump up to 3.3 in 2019 in order to have the same version
number as Deadwood.
MaraDNS 1.0 used a recursive DNS server that was implemented rather
quickly and had difficult-to-maintain code. This code was completely
rewritten for the MaraDNS 2.0 release, which now uses a separate
recursive DNS server.
Overview
MaraDNS 3.5 consists of three primary components: A UDP-only authoritative
DNS server for hosting domains, a UDP recursive DNS server called
Deadwood for finding domains on the internet, and a Lua-powered DNS
server called coLunacyDNS. MaraDNS’ recursive DNS server Deadwood
shares no code with MaraDNS’ authoritative DNS server.
coLunacyDNS is a Lua-based name server which uses a combination of C
(for the heavy lifting of binding to DNS sockets, processing DNS requests,
and handling pending replies from upstream DNS servers) and Lua (for
deciding how to respond to a given query) to have both performance
and flexibility.
In more detail: MaraDNS has one daemon, the authoritative daemon
(called maradns), that provides information to recursive DNS servers
on the internet, and another daemon, the recursive daemon (called
Deadwood), that gets DNS information from the internet for web
browsers and other internet clients.
A simplified way to look at it: MaraDNS puts your web page on the
Internet; Deadwood looks for web pages on the Internet.
Since MaraDNS’ authoritative daemon does not support TCP, MaraDNS
includes a separate DNS-over-TCP server called zoneserver that
supports both standard DNS-over-TCP and DNS zone transfers.
Neither MaraDNS nor the UNIX version of Deadwood have support for
daemonization; this is handled by a separate program included with
MaraDNS called Duende. Deadwood’s Windows port, on the other hand,
includes support for running as a Windows service.
MaraDNS also includes a simple DNS querying tool called askmara and
a number of other miscellaneous tools: Lua 5.1 scripts for processing
MaraDNS’ documentation (since MaraDNS comes with a fork of Lua 5.1, these
scripts do not have an external dependency), some Unicode conversion
utilities, scripts for building and installing MaraDNS, automated SQA
tests, etc.
MaraDNS is a native UNIX program which can run in Windows via cygwin.
Both Deadwood, MaraDNS’ recursive resolver, and coLunacyDNS, a DNS
server configured with a Lua 5.1 script, are cross-platform applications
with full Windows ports.
MaraDNS 2.0 has full (albeit not fully tested) IPv6 support.
Internals
MaraDNS 3.5’s authoritative server uses code going all the way back
to 2001. The core DNS-over-UDP server has a number of components,
including two different zone file parsers, a mararc parser, a secure
random number generator, and so on.
MaraDNS is written entirely in C. No objective C nor C++ classes are
used in MaraDNS’ code.
MaraDNS 2.0’s “Deadwood” recursive server was started in 2007 and has
far cleaner code. Its random number generator, for example, uses a
smaller, simpler, and more secure cryptographic algorithm; its
configuration file parser uses a finite state machine interpreter; its
handling of multiple simultaneous pending connections is done using
select() and a state machine instead of with threads.
Other DNS servers
The landscape of open-source DNS servers has changed greatly since 2001
when MaraDNS was started. There are now a number of different DNS
servers still actively developed and maintained: BIND, Power DNS,
NSD/Unbound, as well as MaraDNS. DjbDNS is no longer being updated and
the unofficial forks have limited support; notably it took nearly five
months for someone to come up with a patch for CVE-2012-1191.
MaraDNS’ strength is that it’s a remarkably small, lightweight, easy to
configure, and mostly cross-platform DNS server. Deadwood is a tiny DNS
server with full recursion support, perfect for embedded systems.
MaraDNS’ weakness is that it does not have some features other DNS
servers have. For example, while Deadwood has the strongest spoof
protection available without cryptography, it does not have support for
DNSSEC.
As another example, MaraDNS does not have full zone transfer support;
while MaraDNS can both serve zones and receive external zone files from
other DNS servers, MaraDNS needs to be restarted to update its database
of DNS records.
MaraDNS’ future
MaraDNS is a mature application. Being open source code, the amount
of time I have to devote to MaraDNS is highly variable. Right now,
I am concentrating my efforts to revamp MaraDNS so that it can
continue to compile and run for as long as possible, minimizing the
number of external dependencies so that outside changes are unlikely
to break MaraDNS.
For MaraDNS to break, either the C language would have to change to
break programs that compile with few to no warnings here in the 2020s,
or the POSIX standard would have to change to the point that POSIX
compliant scripts which run here in the 2020s no longer run. Both
of these are very unlikely to happen.
Y2038 statement
MaraDNS is fully Y2038 compliant on systems with a 64-bit time_t. Here
in the 2020s, even 32-bit Linux distributions, such as Alpine Linux,
have a 64-bit time_t.
Deadwood, in addition, for its Windows 32-bit binary, uses Windows
filetime to generate internal timestamps; filetime stamps will not run
over until the year 30827 or so.
coLunacyDNS, likewise, uses Windows filetime for timestamps with its
Win32 binary.
On *NIX systems with a 32-bit time_t, some features which depend on
OS-level time and date libraries are disabled. MaraDNS has support for
showing a human readable timestamp with the timestamp_type parameter;
this parameter is disabled on systems with a 32-bit time_t since the
underlying libraries MaraDNS uses will probably fail at the Y2038 cutoff.
Likewise, MaraDNS has support for generating a human-readable SOA
serial number with the synth_soa_serial parameter, but this feature
is disabled if time_t is 32-bit. In both cases, the feature in
question is, by default, disabled in MaraDNS, so only users who have
explicitly enabled these features will see any change in behavior.
MaraDNS has the ability to generate a synthetic SOA serial number if
a zone file does not have a SOA record. The SOA serial is based on the
timestamp for the zone file. If time_t is 32-bit, MaraDNS assumes that
the stat call will return a negative timestamp after the Y2038 cutoff,
and will adjust timestamps from before 2001 (the year MaraDNS was first
developed) to be after the Y2038 cutoff. If there are systems out there
where a stat call for a file’s modification time fail after the Y2038
cutoff, one can avoid Y2038 issues by having a SOA record with a serial
number in zone files. The Windows port of MaraDNS, as of 3.5.0028,
uses Windows Y2038 compliant system calls instead of POSIX calls to get
zone file timestamps.
Both Deadwood and coLunacyDNS make some effort to generate accurate
timestamps on *NIX systems with a 32-bit time_t until later than
2106; this code assumes that 32-bit systems will have the time
stamp “wrap around” after 2038 but still have the 32-bit time be
updated.
Cyber Resilience Act statement
MaraDNS is a project developed on a strictly volunteer, non-commercial
basis. It has been developed outside the course of a commercial
activity, developed entirely in the Americas (i.e. outside of Europe)
and therefore is not subject to the restrictions or conditions of the
proposed EU Cyber Resilience Act. Someone selling a product that
uses any component of MaraDNS may be subject to this act and may
need to handle any and all necessary compliance.
MaraDNS, as always, is provided free of charge but with no warranty.
Updates
2022 Updates
MaraDNS was updated in 2022 to have its automated tests run in an Ubuntu
22.04 Docker container instead of an Ubuntu 20.04 Docker container.
The tests have also been updated to be more portable, running in both
Alpine Linux (Busybox-based Linux distro) and Ubuntu 22.04.
I also fixed a minor security issue, which also affected other DNS servers,
where a clever attacker with access to the recurisve DNS server could had
kept records in the cache longer than desired.
min_ttl now correctly sets a minimum TTL for direct answers to queries.
I have backported the min_ttl parameter to the older legacy 3.4 version
of MaraDNS.
While using Deadwood as a fully recursive server is not guaranteed to
be fully supported, I have fixed a long standing bug with how Deadwood
handled certain CNAME chains, and have added tests to make sure this
bug stays fixed.
MaraDNS no longer uses non-POSIX scripting languages not included
with MaraDNS:
- MaraDNS’s documentation system, EJ, has been updated to use Lua 5.1
(included with MaraDNS with the namelunacyincoLunacyDNS/lunacy)
instead of Perl scripts. - The old
bind2csv2.pytool has been removed, so that MaraDNS no
longer needs Python to run any of its components.
2021 Updates
Deadwood has a new parameter: source_ip4. This optional parameter
is used to specify the source IP when sending queries upstream. The
majority of users should be able to leave this untouched; this is for
cases when Deadwood is multi-homed and we need to specify which IP
to use when querying root or upstream DNS servers.
One line change to zoneserver.c to make it work better with systemd.
Synthetic IP generator example added to coLunacyDNS
2020 Updates
I have updated things so that the Git version of MaraDNS is the
authoritative “One source of truth” for MaraDNS’s source code.
The Git code is, every time a new MaraDNS release is made,
converted in to tarballs (with full Git history) which can be
downloaded at Sourceforge
and MaraDNS’s web page.
I have added block list support to Deadwood, to allow a large list
of host names to be blocked.
I have created a new service: coLunacyDNS, a simple Lua-based DNS server
which can return IPv4 (A) and IPv6 (AAAA) DNS records. It has the
ability to query other DNS servers, and customize the answer given to
the client based on the contents of a Lua script. All programs have IPv6
support in Linux as well as *NIX clones, and the Windows 32-bit binary of
coLunacyDNS has IPv6 support.
Browse free open source DNS software and projects for Windows below. Use the toggles on the left to filter open source DNS software by OS, license, language, programming language, and project status.
-
Streamline your workflows by migrating customer records into a digital format. With one centralized system for customer management, scheduling, invoicing, create automated payment reminders for customers, payments, reporting, and more, you gain full visibility across business operations that allows you to better serve your customers from home or the office.
-
Bidlogix provide auction software to auction houses around the globe.
We offer timed auction software, webcast auction software along with an optional invoicing management system.
Our software is embedded on your site with fully customisable styling.
Based in Brighton, UK Bidlogix started providing auction software in 2013. Our 2 in-house development teams are constantly evolving the product with in excess of 10 auctions per day being run using our software.
Our software can cater for the largest of auctions, all in real-time and can support multiple languages. -
1
This is a command line utility to resolve DNS requests via a SOCKS tunnel like Tor or a HTTP proxy.
Downloads:
11,062 This WeekLast Update:
See Project
-
2
Gobuster
Directory/File, DNS and VHost busting tool written in Go
Gobuster is a tool used to brute-force. This project is born out of the necessity to have something that didn’t have a fat Java GUI (console FTW), something that did not do recursive brute force, something that allowed me to brute force folders and multiple extensions at once, something that compiled to native on multiple platforms, something that was faster than an interpreted script (such as Python), and something that didn’t require a runtime. Provides several modes, like the classic directory brute-forcing mode, DNS subdomain brute-forcing mode, the mode that enumerates open S3 buckets and looks for existence and bucket listings, and the virtual host brute-forcing mode (not the same as DNS!). Since this tool is written in Go you need to install the Go language/compiler/etc. Full details of installation and set up can be found on the Go language website. Once installed you have two options. You need at least go 1.16.0 to compile gobuster.
Downloads:
132 This WeekLast Update:
See Project
-
3
theHarvester is a very simple to use, yet powerful and effective tool designed to be used in the early stages of a penetration test or red team engagement. Use it for open source intelligence (OSINT) gathering to help determine a company’s external threat landscape on the internet. The tool gathers emails, names, subdomains, IPs and URLs using multiple public data sources.
Downloads:
61 This WeekLast Update:
See Project
-
4
Acrylic is a local DNS proxy for Windows which improves the performance of your computer by caching the responses coming from your DNS servers and helps you fight unwanted ads through the use of a custom HOSTS file (optimized for handling hundreds of thousands of domain names) with support for wildcards and regular expressions.
When you browse a web page a portion of the loading time is dedicated to name resolution while the rest is dedicated to the transfer of the web page contents. What Acrylic does is to reduce the time dedicated to name resolution for frequently visited addresses closest to zero possible. Furthermore Acrylic’s sliding expiration caching mechanism and DNS silent updates are able to improve the browsing experience independently of the browser.
With Acrylic you can also gracefully overcome downtimes of your DNS servers without disrupting your work, because in that case you will at least be able to connect to your favourite websites and to your email server.
Downloads:
548 This WeekLast Update:
See Project
-
Increase conversions, reduce helpdesk costs and make your customers happy. Let us show you how.
-
5
Self Integrated DNS DHCP Server Open Source Freeware Windows/Linux. Works as DHCP or DNS Server or both. Using both services automatically adds DHCP allotted hosts automatically to DNS Server. Support Relay Agent, PXEBOOT, BOOTP, Zone Trasfer, DHCP Range Filters. Download.
Downloads:
162 This WeekLast Update:
See Project
-
6
TeemIp is a free, open source, WEB based, IP Address Management (IPAM) tool that provides comprehensive IP Management capabilities. It allows you to manage your IPv4, IPv6 and DNS spaces: track user requests, discover and allocate IPs, manage your IP plan, your subnet space, your zones and DNS records in accordance with best in class DDI practices.
At the same time, TeemIp’s CMDB allows you to manage your IT inventory and links your CIs to the IPs they use.
Project source code is located on https://github.com/TeemIP
Downloads:
164 This WeekLast Update:
See Project
-
7
PHP class for whois queries, can query the correct whois server for domain names, ip addresses and AS handles and returns data in a structured array.
Downloads:
69 This WeekLast Update:
See Project
-
8
SmartDNS
Local DNS server to obtain the fastest website IP
SmartDNS is a local DNS server. SmartDNS accepts DNS query requests from local clients, obtains DNS query results from multiple upstream DNS servers, and returns the results with the fastest access speed to clients, improving network access speed. At the same time, it supports the designation of specific domain name IP addresses, and high-quality matching to achieve the effect of filtering advertisements. Different from all-servers of dnsmasq, smartdns returns the resolution results with the fastest access speed. Supports Raspberry Pi, openwrt, ASUS router, windows and other devices. Supports domain name suffix matching mode, simplify filtering configuration, filter 200,000 records in less than 1ms. Supports domain name shunting, different types of domain names are queried to different DNS servers. Support standard Linux system (Raspberry Pi), various firmware of openwrt system, and native firmware of ASUS router. And support for Windows 10 WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux).
Downloads:
2 This WeekLast Update:
See Project
-
9
CoreDNS
CoreDNS is a DNS server that chains plugins
CoreDNS is a DNS server/forwarder, written in Go, that chains plugins. Each plugin performs a (DNS) function. CoreDNS is a Cloud Native Computing Foundation graduated project. CoreDNS is a fast and flexible DNS server. The key word here is flexible: with CoreDNS you are able to do what you want with your DNS data by utilizing plugins. If some functionality is not provided out of the box you can add it by writing a plugin. CoreDNS can listen for DNS requests coming in over UDP/TCP (go’old DNS), TLS (RFC 7858), also called DoT, DNS over HTTP/2 — DoH — (RFC 8484) and gRPC (not a standard). Serve zone data from a file; both DNSSEC (NSEC only) and DNS are supported (file and auto). Retrieve zone data from primaries, i.e., act as a secondary server (AXFR only) (secondary). Sign zone data on-the-fly (dnssec). Load balancing of responses (loadbalance). Allow for zone transfers, i.e., act as a primary server (file + transfer). Automatically load zone files from disk (auto).
Downloads:
1 This WeekLast Update:
See Project
-
Engagedly is a fast-paced growth provider and an award-winning performance management solution provider. Built upon best practices and decades of research, Engagedly’s People + Strategy platform is evolving performance management to drive successful organizational outcomes across the globe. Engagedly’s E3 unified platform combines the power of business strategy execution, talent enablement, and employee engagement into one easy-to-use software solution. Today, Engagedly serves more than 300+ customers worldwide, empowering high performance organizations through people + strategy alignment.
-
10
ExternalDNS
Configure external DNS servers (AWS Route53, Google CloudDNS and other
ExternalDNS synchronizes exposed Kubernetes Services and Ingresses with DNS providers. Inspired by Kubernetes DNS, Kubernetes’ cluster-internal DNS server, ExternalDNS makes Kubernetes resources discoverable via public DNS servers. Like KubeDNS, it retrieves a list of resources (Services, Ingresses, etc.) from the Kubernetes API to determine the desired list of DNS records. Unlike KubeDNS, however, it’s not a DNS server itself, but merely configures other DNS providers accordingly, e.g. AWS Route 53 or Google Cloud DNS. In a broader sense, ExternalDNS allows you to control DNS records dynamically via Kubernetes resources in a DNS provider-agnostic way. ExternalDNS’ allows you to keep selected zones (via domain-filter) synchronized with Ingresses and Services of type=LoadBalancer in various cloud providers. ExternalDNS can become aware of the records it is managing therefore ExternalDNS can safely manage non-empty hosted zones.
Downloads:
1 This WeekLast Update:
See Project
-
11
Twisted
Event-driven networking engine written in Python
Twisted is an event-based framework for internet applications, supporting Python 3.6+. It includes modules for many different purposes. Twisted supports all major system event loops, select (all platforms), poll (most POSIX platforms), epoll (Linux), kqueue (FreeBSD, macOS), IOCP (Windows), and various GUI event loops (GTK+2/3, Qt, wxWidgets). Third-party reactors can plug into Twisted, and provide support for additional event loops.
Downloads:
1 This WeekLast Update:
See Project
-
12
MyHotspot
Wireless-LAN for Hotels ,Cafés and Shools
Give your customers the flexibility and extra mobility with Wireless Internet Access
MyHotspot is a professional Wireless LAN Free software solution for providing internet access to your customers. Customers will be redirected to your login page to authenticate with user account or a prepaid-code before getting the Internet access. The PayPal payment option allows your customers to create and pay for network access directly. The software controls download, upload, data transfer, time usage, visited pages. MyHotSpot Billing software runs on your Windows PC, controls unlimited user or prepaid-code accounts, and displays data to customers on your self-branded pages.
MyHotspot billing software is the definitive tool for managing your public WIFI-HotSpot in internet cafes, shools, hotels, bistros or gaming cafe / game center.Downloads:
27 This WeekLast Update:
See Project
-
13
Multiple services fork of original multi-platform inadyn, and inadyn-advanced projects. Supports many update services, easily extendable for others including additional servers config file, custom response codes, custom parameter names, and custom update server type. Highly flexible with many per alias option parameters. Supports IPv4, and IPv6. Console, or installed as a service. Unicode. And other features.
dyndns.org (dynamic, static, & custom)
freedns.afraid.org
zoneedit.com
no-ip.com
easydns.com
sitelutions.com
dnsomatic.com
ipv6tb.he.net
tzo.com
dhis.org
two-dns.de
www.dnsdynamic.org
dnspark.com
regfish.de
www.ovh.com
joker.com
system-ns.com
changeip.com
dnsexit.com
nsupdate.com
loopia.com
domains.google.com (requires SSL bridge, like stunnel)
duckdns.org
di.fi
ddnss.de
dynv6.com
selfhost.de
Downloads:
50 This WeekLast Update:
See Project
-
14
Poweradmin is a web-based DNS administration tool for PowerDNS server. The interface has full support for most of the features of PowerDNS. It has full support for all zone types, for supermasters, full support for IPv6 and multi-language support.
Downloads:
48 This WeekLast Update:
See Project
-
15
Visual Synapse are component wrappers around the Synapse tcp/ip libraries. It wraps a few common internet protocols, like HTTP, UDP, DNS, ICMP, TCP and SMTP to multi-threaded components that can be used with Delphi, Kylix, Freepascal and C++ Builder.
Downloads:
29 This WeekLast Update:
See Project
-
16
A DNS server for Unix and Windows platforms, supporting authoritative service (master/slave) as well as caching. Also featuring a graphical master file editor (mfedit), a graphical DNS query tool (dnsquery) and a DNS programming library for C++ (poslib).
Downloads:
17 This WeekLast Update:
See Project
-
17
SysMate — Hosts File Walker is an approachable and portable software application that facilitates a user-friendly working environment for helping you manage the Hosts file. You don’t need to care about the hosts file. SysMate — Host File Walker has been designed to cater for the hosts’s file structure, entry insertion and DNS to IP conversion. So you don’t need to know the IP of either the DNS you are diverting from or the one you are porting to. SHFW automatically resolves the IP, detects for conflict within the hosts file and warns you to make changes.
The GUI is represented by a normal window with a plain and simple structure that contains an example on how the Hosts file should look like.
You can add as many new hosts to the file as you want by specifying the IP address and site (DNS), delete the Hosts file or restore its settings to default, restore the last modified Hosts, as well as back up and restore data. There are no other notable options available here.Downloads:
14 This WeekLast Update:
See Project
-
18
KeexyBox
The box to keep the Internet under your control
KeexyBox allows you to do parental control, block ads, limit telemetry, and browse the Internet anonymously from your home network without installing any software on your devices. It also can be used to create a public wireless access point with the captive portal. It is a software program which requires a Raspberry PI box and which is installed on Raspbian.
It constitutes a cut-off point between your devices (computers, tablets, smartphones, etc.) and your router or Internet box. KeexyBox acts as a default gateway and DNS server for the devices in your home network. It thus intercepts all connections to the Internet to carry out website filtering or to activate browsing via the Tor anonymity network according to connection profiles which you have configured.Downloads:
11 This WeekLast Update:
See Project
-
19
This project is to enhance the python DNS library initially written by Guido van Rossum, then extended by Anthony Baxter, Michael Ströder and others.
Downloads:
6 This WeekLast Update:
See Project
-
20
Java Dynamic DNS Client. Platform independent. Runs as application or demon. Supports ZoneEdit, Enom, ChangeIP, DynDNS.org, dhis.org. Simple to handle. Management per JMX and Ajax web interface. Mail Notification. Free accessibility monitoring w. JXTA P2
Downloads:
4 This WeekLast Update:
See Project
-
21
THIS PROJECT IS DISCONTINUED.
ProBIND is a web application designed for managing the DNS zones for one or more servers running the ISC BIND DNS server software. For more information, visit the project website.Downloads:
4 This WeekLast Update:
See Project
-
22
A client to update the IP automatic with http://freedns.afraid.org/ It is a Windows Service that works in the lastest versions of Windows (Windows 7 and Windows 2008). Also it has the possibility of sending an e-mail whenever the IP changes.
Downloads:
7 This WeekLast Update:
See Project
-
23
It is not only a web server, it is also
Mail server, DNS server, FTP server, Proxy server… All in one!
This program will help you to open all the possibilities Internet can offer for your company —
public site, provide Internet access and personal mailboxes for each employee!
HTTP server.
Server Side Includes. Regular expression in SSI.
CGI interface for scripts (Executable files; Perl,PHP, or another external interpreters)
ISAPI interface.
Virtual hosts and directories
Mail
POP3 server.
SMTP server.
FTP server
HTTP proxy server
DNS server
DHCP serverDownloads:
7 This WeekLast Update:
See Project
-
24
DynDNS Simply Client is a computer application (for DynDNS users)
that keeps your hostname’s IP address up-to-date.
The DynDNS Simply Client periodically checks your network’s IP address
and it sends (updates) the new IP address to your hostname in your
Dyn account (http://dyn.com/dns/dyndns-free).Downloads:
3 This WeekLast Update:
See Project
-
25
Dynamic DNS update tool for DynDns services. Features: Stateful memory, a complete activity log, configuration file, and cross-platform portability.
Downloads:
4 This WeekLast Update:
See Project
Support MaraDNS or
listen to my music
¡Download MaraDNS!
Current stable release
The current stable release of MaraDNS is MaraDNS 3.5.0036, released
May 2, 2023. This release is available as UNIX/Windows source
code and as a Windows binary zipfile.
maradns-3.5.0036.tar.xz
sig
maradns-3-5-0036-win32.zip
sig
Note that Deadwood is no longer a separate project, and is now
included with MaraDNS.
Git tree
MaraDNS is developed using the Git revision control system.
The Git code is hosted at multiple locations:
Github
—
Codeberg
—
Gitlab
—
Bitbucket
—
SourceHut
Please use Github to file bug reports.
GPG public key
All tarball releases are signed with MaraDNS’s
GPG public key (last updated 2012).
Other
MaraDNS includes the scripting language Lunacy,
a Lua 5.1 fork, which is used by the coLunacyDNS service, the document
building scripts, and in some of the automated tests. Lunacy can
use editline to
have up arrow history, making it more pleasant to use on the command
line. A local download of a recent source tarball is here at editline-1.17.1.tar.gz.
Click/tap here for MaraDNS 3.4.10
MaraDNS 3.4.10 is a legacy release where the only changes are
security and other important updates. Here is the tarball:
maradns-3.4.10.tar.gz.
There is also just Deadwood 3.4.09,
an older branch of Deadwood where, as with MaraDNS 3.4, the only
changes are security and other important updates. Note that
all Deadwood 3.4.09 files are included with MaraDNS 3.4.09.
View the changelog
Disclaimer
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHORS »AS IS» AND ANY EXPRESS
OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE
LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF
SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR
BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY,
WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE
OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE,
EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
Information on file types
.bz2 A .bz2 file is compressed with the bzip2
program. The maradns tar.bz2 file contains the source code for MaraDNS.
.zip A .zip file is a compressed file that
Windows XP can open.
The MaraDNS .zip file contains a Windows native binary of MaraDNS.