Definitely not an AD - it's just the best option that I found, and have been super happy with it! There are lots of ways to do this (people have shared even more options in the comments here), and for a lot of people AdGuard/Pi-hole/... are the relatively easier options
They're easy to set up and unless you're using it to support thousands of DNS requests per second, it's not appreciably (on human scales) slower than forwarding requests to your ISP's servers and/or 8.8.8.8 or 1.1.1.1.
More detail about recursive resolvers and how they work can be found here[1]
Sure, one or two of us running our own resolvers isn't going to hurt, but an extra hundred million or so resolvers would hurt -> at best just causes all the servers targeted by the resolver to add more layers of caching
What am I missing by not using AdGuard, PiHole and similar?
DNS is very easy. Email is tough. Usually one would add a media server such as Plex and Nextcloud which is very useful.
I've been running bind9 on a computer under my desk for about 20 years.
The only subdscription required is an ISP contract that includes static IP.
Maybe I'll get a netflix acct (never had one), and "self-host" some videos...
I’d say exact opposite. Now you’re sharing data with multiple parties and each is potentially getting enough data to extrapolate the whole picture
It does look like PowerDNS supports it: https://doc.powerdns.com/authoritative/dnsupdate.html
Not "feeling like" calling your ISP to get a static IP, but also wanting to self-host?
Which is a whole different type of mental challenge compared to figuring out the technical details of self hosting something ;)
Exactly this... we have enough issues with our internet I didn't want to add this into the mix - especially as if they decide to not really give me a static IP, then I have to change it everywhere :/
I trust my VPS provider far more than my ISP
I tested with 2 ISPs I use and both have it as a prominent add on that you can add for extra cost per month in the UI.
Not 99.9999% uptime obviously but good enough.
But I would just use https://pi-hole.net/
dns-blocking is evil, no matter who does it.
stop lying to yourself and install contentblocker on your devices
You really ought to expand on that line of reasoning in order to get anyone to take this comment seriously.
more or less about trustworthy infrastructure
If I am correct, your argument boils down to blocking happening outside the direct control of the user. This technically is true, as you don't have an icon in your browser like you would have with an extension.
At the same time, it being outside the control of the user is not really true if the user is also the person in control of the blocking solution. I don't know how it works with AdGuard, although I assume it is the same. Pi Hole offers extensive insights in what requests are being blocked, from which client and when.
This can even be adjusted on a per client level. Making that argument a more theoretical rather than a practical one.
it's about the blocking occurring in reach of the user (client) or not (infrastructure quirk that has to be worked around)
