Numa

DNS you own. Everywhere you go. — numa.rs

A portable DNS resolver in a single binary. Block ads on any network, name your local services (frontend.numa), and override any hostname with auto-revert — all from your laptop, no cloud account or Raspberry Pi required.

Built from scratch in Rust. Zero DNS libraries. RFC 1035 wire protocol parsed by hand. Caching, ad blocking, and local service domains out of the box. Optional recursive resolution from root nameservers with full DNSSEC chain-of-trust validation. One ~8MB binary, everything embedded.

Quick Start

brew install razvandimescu/tap/numa
# or: cargo install numa
# or: curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/razvandimescu/numa/main/install.sh | sh

sudo numa                              # port 53 requires root

Open the dashboard: http://numa.numa (or http://localhost:5380)

Set as system DNS: sudo numa install

Local Services

Name your dev services instead of remembering port numbers:

curl -X POST localhost:5380/services \
  -d '{"name":"frontend","target_port":5173}'

Now https://frontend.numa works in your browser — green lock, valid cert, WebSocket passthrough for HMR. No mkcert, no nginx, no /etc/hosts.

Add path-based routing (app.numa/api → :5001), share services across machines via LAN discovery, or configure everything in numa.toml.

Ad Blocking & Privacy

385K+ domains blocked via Hagezi Pro. Works on any network — coffee shops, hotels, airports. Travels with your laptop.

By default, Numa forwards to your existing system DNS — everything works as before, just with caching and ad blocking on top. For full privacy, set mode = "recursive" — Numa resolves directly from root nameservers. No upstream dependency, no single entity sees your full query pattern. DNSSEC validates the full chain of trust: RRSIG signatures, DNSKEY verification, DS delegation, NSEC/NSEC3 denial proofs. Read how it works →

LAN Discovery

Run Numa on multiple machines. They find each other automatically via mDNS:

Machine A (192.168.1.5)              Machine B (192.168.1.20)
┌──────────────────────┐             ┌──────────────────────┐
│ Numa                 │    mDNS     │ Numa                 │
│  - api (port 8000)   │◄───────────►│  - grafana (3000)    │
│  - frontend (5173)   │  discovery  │                      │
└──────────────────────┘             └──────────────────────┘

From Machine B: curl http://api.numa → proxied to Machine A's port 8000. Enable with numa lan on.

Hub mode: run one instance with bind_addr = "0.0.0.0:53" and point other devices' DNS to it — they get ad blocking + .numa resolution without installing anything.

How It Compares

Performance

691ns cached round-trip. ~2.0M qps throughput. Zero heap allocations in the hot path. Recursive queries average 237ms after SRTT warmup (12x improvement over round-robin). ECDSA P-256 DNSSEC verification: 174ns. Benchmarks →

Learn More

• Blog: Implementing DNSSEC from Scratch in Rust
• Blog: I Built a DNS Resolver from Scratch
• Configuration reference — all options documented inline
• REST API — 27 endpoints across overrides, cache, blocking, services, diagnostics

Roadmap

• DNS forwarding, caching, ad blocking, developer overrides
• .numa local domains — auto TLS, path routing, WebSocket proxy
• LAN service discovery — mDNS, cross-machine DNS + proxy
• DNS-over-HTTPS — encrypted upstream
• Recursive resolution + DNSSEC — chain-of-trust, NSEC/NSEC3
• SRTT-based nameserver selection
• pkarr integration — self-sovereign DNS via Mainline DHT
• Global .numa names — DHT-backed, no registrar

License

MIT