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Connecting to fastest server

I'm running NextDNS on pfsense via CLI, but for some reason, it never wants to connect to the fastest servers however many times I try.

I've tried rebooting pfsense and restarting the service, but it always connects to annexia-man when others are consistently faster.

https://nextdns.io/diag/fb76b700-7d5b-11ec-a639-ab002b683e5c

Is there a way to force / steer it to connect to others? Or what is the logic that's used to connect to the server it connects to?

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  • Chris, I have same issue on pfSense as well ("server": "anexia-chi-1"). Very briefly I saw OVH (closer to me in Canada then Australian servers).

    Yes, I'd like to find a way to choose closer servers as well. I tried restarting as you and restarted the resolver but to no avail. Same server.

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  • My situation isn't as bad as you guys, but it would still be great to be able to connect to the closest / fastest servers.

    It would be good to be able to 'force' or at least have the ability to select server priorities or similar.

    Is anyone from NextDNS available to comment?

    Like 1
  • I noticed this too on my pfsense box (not sure it's related to pfsense). 

    The (really dirty / hacky) way i got round it was create a floating rule to block traffic to the IPs of the anexia-man server, which now sends me over to zept-lon which is consistently lower on latency as well as a few less hops.

    The issue you might run into is private DNS on android wont work, however i got round this by only blocking traffic from the pfsense box (where i run the cli proxy) which allows other devices to contact whatever server they want (which tend to be london anyway!)

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      • Chris
      • Chris.12
      • 1 yr ago
      • Reported - view

      Mark thanks for the tip.

      Lucky enough, it's on a few ms difference, so I'll leave that tweak for now, but I'm keen to understand how or why it's not connecting to 3 consistently faster servers?

      I wish NextDNS could comment or make suggestions?

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    • Chris we have two modes if steering: anycast and ultralow. Ultralow will often give better results than anycast but can only work with DoH/DoT with no bootstrap IP. Neither can guarantee the PoP with the absolute lowest latency, especially when it’s a few ms appart. Internet is not a fixed/stable network, things are moving constantly.

      Sometime the steering can be very wrong (like going to a different country). In such case we will investigate and try our best to fix it. 

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      • Chris
      • Chris.12
      • 1 yr ago
      • 1
      • Reported - view

      NextDNS I appreciate the response and thanks for the explanation.

      Although only a few ms difference from me, is there a way I can encourage a connection to one of the *-lon servers, as they're consistently faster for me?

      Like 1
    • Chris there is not. 5ms is impossible to even sense a difference, you should not obsess about it.

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      • Chris
      • Chris.12
      • 1 yr ago
      • 1
      • Reported - view

      NextDNS don't worry, I'm not obsessing, just enquiring how it works and if a faster connection can be utilised, then that would be preferred.

      Like 1
      • K M S
      • K_M_S
      • 1 yr ago
      • Reported - view

      Chris exactly my thoughts 

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  • I have the same problem from Turkey. Connecting to Viana instead of connecting to Istanbul server. The latency between the two servers is huge.

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    • LazJedi the diag shows you are on ist.  Vienna is only for anycast secondary (you are using ultralow). And 20ms diff is by no mean “huge”.

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      • LazJedi
      • LazJedi
      • 1 yr ago
      • Reported - view

      NextDNS If I'm still in ist then it's okay. Thanks. :)

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