AdGuard DNS Client: Encrypt DNS on devices without native support

Imagine: you’re setting up Private AdGuard DNS for your company but your computers don’t support encrypted DNS. Use unencrypted instead? But it will be much harder to manage connected devices on your dashboard and collect request stats.

Now there’s no need to use plain DNS in this case. We’ve developed a special utility — AdGuard DNS Client. Essentially, it’s a simple DNS dispatcher that, among other things, solves the following tasks:

• Set the default server to resolve DNS requests from all devices:

  'default':
      address: 'https://dns.adguard-dns.com/dns-query'
  

• Use known device IDs for your devices:

  'my_phone':
      address: 'https://d.adguard-dns.com/dns-query/abcd1234'
      match:
          - client: '192.168.1.1'
  

  Where abcd1234 is the device ID and 192.168.1.1 is the static IP address of your device in the network.

• Set a server to resolve requests to specific domains (for example, when your office has a private DNS zone):

  'my_office_network':
      address: '192.168.0.1:53'
      match:
          - question domain: 'mycompany.local'
  

  Where mycompany.local is your local zone. This will match www.mycompany.local, subdomain.domain.mycompany.local, and so on.

• Use combinations of these matches.

What this means

• You can use an encrypted DNS server even on devices that do not support it. There’s no need to download the AdGuard app.
• Devices will be displayed on the dashboard where you can configure filtering and view statistics for them. To do this, you will need to create a separate link for each device through the dashboard by clicking Connect new device.

How to use it

You can download the tool for Windows or install it via the command line.

Specify the addresses of your servers and devices. If necessary, you can also specify fallback and bootstrap addresses.

What else you need to know

Please note: AdGuard DNS Client is currently in a beta stage. Not all features are implemented yet and the tool may be unstable. If you find a bug, please report it to us. As always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions on GitHub.