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General Overview Available?

I'm a new user to NextDNS, and I'm somewhere in the middle in terms of technical understanding of what's going on with what I clearly think is an awesome product.  I haven't really found a good, general overview of how NextDNS works though, and I was wondering if someone can point me in the right direction.

I totally understand how DNS works, DOH, etc., but I'm struggling with the "Configuration" aspect.  The way I understand it is when I configure whatever device to reach NextDNS under a configuration, I'll be able to see the logs, analytics, etc. associated with the device.  I'm also assuming that I can select however many "blockers" I want as part of the configuration.  I could create different configurations for the kids devices, the wife, etc.

Where I struggle is I have told my router to use the NextDNS IPs as the DNS provider for my home network.  What benefit do I get by doing so, i.e. do my IOT devices get some level of protection?  What about Amazon tablets or Chromebooks that can't be configured with NextDNS?  Are those DNS queries protected by DOH?  Does malware and SPAM get blocked for those devices?  By telling my router to use NextDNS as the DNS provider, am I still avoiding have my ISP snoop on my DNS queries?  (I think "yes" in this case.)  I fully understand that by setting up my router to point to the NextDNS servers, I'm in no way running a VPN, but what is going on other than just using a different DNS provider than the ISP, Cloudflare, Google, etc.?  Is there a white paper that might explain this to a semi-technical geek like myself?

Thanks in advance for any assistance that can be provided.  Hopefully this could be useful to others at my level of understanding.

1 reply

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    • Ruby_Balloon
    • 3 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    Yes, devices connected to your router will get some protection. However without using one of the NextDNS apps, DoH, or DoT then your dns traffic will more than likely be using regular UDP. Also you won't be able to identify devices at the router level unless your router can run executables and install the NextDNS CLI - https://github.com/nextdns/nextdns/wiki

    When you get a chance, I recommend reading the following guides:

     

    "Getting Started" guides

    https://help.nextdns.io/category/getting-started

     

    "Privacy..." guides

    https://help.nextdns.io/category/privacy-blocklist-ad-blocking.

     

    "Identify your devices" guide is at the very bottom of the "Setup" tab on your NextDNS dashboard

    If you look under the "Security" tab, you'll see which toggles will block malware, some are enabled by default. You can also add blocklists for supplemental/additional filtering under the "Privacy" tab. However, I can tell you that it won't block SPAM as that's on the Email Provider side not the DNS provider side.

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