Run Adguard Home with your own Decentralized Handshake DNS Resolver

Last Edited: November 29, 2021

First of all why run AdGuard Home with Handshake DNS Resolver?

Nice question. Think about it...

Suppose you are using Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 or Google 8.8.8.8 or Quad9 9.9.9.9 as a resolver for your AdGuard Home and they are centralized company, if something happen like there whole server get's down for hours at that moment what can you do? nothing really, only wait for those centralized company to get fixed via centralized employees!

Thats why we have chosen Handshake and HNSD is a lightweight client "Only 12MB", which act as a DNS Resolver. Which resolve domain from Handshake Full Node, But biggest benefit is it's Decentralized, Thousands of people running Full Nodes, So even one server down, There still so much server active that this network can't be taken down, Thats why we have chosen Handshake HNSD a lightweight client which resolve domains for us. Don't Worry, Handshake DNS Resolver ( HNSD ) can resolve ICANN's Domain too "Normal internet domain like https://google.com/ "

First thing first, setup AdGuard Home.

How can you setup AdGuard Home? It's easy Follow this link

AdGuard Home setup done?

Now let's setup HNSD

This setup done with Debian based distro.


                            We have to build HNSD from source until they provide prebuilt package. When prebuilt package is available you can
                            Download from here

Now follow this guide to build HNSD from source

Done building HNSD? Now test it out if HNSD running or not

./hnsd -p 4 -r 0.0.0.0:5300

If you ask "why we are using port 5300 instead of 53?" reason AdGuard Home will use port 53 so HNSD will use port 5300 or something else you like

HNSD working correctly right? Stop HNSD with "CTRL + C" for now

Next we need to start HNSD when system turn on. We will do that with systemd, follow these steps

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/hnsd.service

[Unit]
Description=hnsd
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
Restart=always
RestartSec=1
User=root
ExecStart=/home/username/hnsd -p 4 -r 0.0.0.0:5300

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Copy and paste these code in " hnsd.service " file then save with "CTRL + O" hit enter then "CTRL + X" to exit Dont forget to change your Directory + Username in "ExecStart" line
It's time to enable HNSD

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl start hnsd
sudo systemctl enable hnsd

Let's go back to our AdGuard Home

Now visit your AdGuard Home webpage, Go to Settings >> DNS settings

And add your localhost ip 127.0.0.1:5300 in Upstream DNS servers, Like this screenshot below

Scroll down click Apply then click Test Upstreams

You will see success notification

Done? Test it out with Adguard Home ip via terminal

dig @YourAdGuardHomeIP proofofconcept +dnssec

Example:
dig @100.10.10.10 proofofconcept +dnssec

You will see its showing ip address of https://proofofconcept/ like this screenshot below

AdGuard Home With Handshake

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