Any way to persist NextDNS ID when dns-over-https is off?

Routers
1

One of the most common things I found myself doing is turn off NextDNS / encrypted DNS because some wifi network has a captive portal and it’s preventing that from opening. Sadly gl-inet stuff doesn’t have a smart mode for temporarily disabling it while authenticating (or let me bind the switch), so I have to disable it completely

But when the router reboots while it’s off and I enable NextDNS again, the custom configuration profile setting is empty again and I have to look it up. Ended up having a note on my desktop with just the NextDNS ID so that I can copy-paste it into the router settings again :confused:

Any way to have this actually stick? Like some configuration setting file somewhere on the device?

2

Many captive portals rely on DNS hijacking for their implementation, so DNS encryption causes exceptions and there is no good way to switch them intelligently.

1 Like
3

Yeah sadly that seems to be the case. Was thinking of something like - if no connection or if marked as a wifi hotspot, try to connect without dns-over-https

Or just have it bindable to the physical switch. On my android phone I added a quick toggle for NextDNS for exactly that usecase, so I can quickly turn it off when I am trying to join a public wifi network

Is it possible to toggle it through SSH? I could hack together a script that just connects and turns it off as well :slight_smile:

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4

Some faster methods will be considered later.

5

It’s a massive +1 from me.
I toggle between NextDNS and auto a lot and am forever having look up my ID too!

And while you’re there, how about allowing “identfying the device”:
eg. For “John Router”, you would use John--Router-xxxxxx.dns.nextdns.io as your DNS-over-TLS endpoint.

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6

So back to the original question, is there a config file I could write to persist the NextDNS ID? All I want for now is that it doesn’t get wiped when I switch DNS to “Automatic” and then at a later point back to NextDNS

7

The ID is embedded in the /etc/config/stubby file and cannot currently be saved when switching.

8

Discovered a small workaround

Although it means no dnssec, but what you can do is setting the NextDNS IPv4 and IPv6 addresses as “manual” DNS server on the gl-inet router. Then enable Dynamic DNS support and copy the glddns address into NextDNS as “linked IP”

Because it’s just a manual DNS and not encrypted, it still allows captive portals. Not perfect because obviously would prefer DNS-over-TLS or HTTPS, but better than constantly switching back and forth…