this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2026
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[–] Trampampoline@sh.itjust.works 43 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I hosted shit for about ten years before really understanding how local dns worked.

Imagine a primitive society that discovered literally every major modern scientific achievement, but somehow missed the wheel. That's basically how my first setup went lol.

[–] greatwhitebuffalo41@piefed.social 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I do not self host. I just wandered in here. Do you have suggested resources to learn more about DNS? I feel like generally searching shit sucks to get an answer like that lately.

[–] Trampampoline@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 hours ago

A dns server knows what and where things are. That's its only real job, to tell who's asking where say, http://eff.org/ is.

"Ay homie, where's https://eff.org/?"

over here - 173.239.79.200

"thanks, bud!"

The issue is, the dns server you use by default is under the control of whoever your provider is, and as a result, they get all of your dns lookups like the example above as well as every porn site, every piracy site, everywhere.

Installing your own, or simply moving to one your provider has no business with like 9.9.9.9 can help keep your dns queries more private, go a step further and use encrypted dns, as many providers supply, and you'll be even further covered.

Installing your own, however, comes with the added perk of being able to apply your own dns entries. Suddenly local addresses can have custom names without ever touching a hosts file. Neat! Use DNS certs and you've got local SSL!

I would go find something applicable to feed you for a dns 101, but my old resources don't exist. I just know stuff from years of doing it and failing over and over until things work.

[–] cenzorrll@piefed.ca 2 points 12 hours ago

I have a feeling there's a point in time where most non-it self-hosters got fed up with ads and installed pihole, then learned about DNS. I have a feeling that started about five years ago.

Now it's probably hand in hand with how necessary a pihole is.

[–] eco_game@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I have heard of local DNS multiple times now and been selfhosting for many years, but I'm good with my 192.168.178.39 :)

[–] Trampampoline@sh.itjust.works 10 points 23 hours ago

It opened the door to pihole and unbound, then dns certs, man... everything's so nice now lol