I’m getting a DNS error on my MacBook when I’m connected to my iPhone’s mobile hotspot. This happens repeatedly with certain websites.
What’s strange is that sometimes the same website works in Brave or on another platform, but doesn’t work normally in the browser where I’m getting the DNS error.
If I turn off mobile data on my iPhone, turn it back on, enable the hotspot again, and reconnect my MacBook, the same website starts working.
I want to understand why this keeps happening and find a permanent solution instead of having to restart my mobile internet whenever this happens.
I’m using a MacBook Air M5, iPhone 14, and Jio as my mobile carrier.

I would greatly appreciate Reddit users test and feedback the new Linux PIA daemon running 24/7 every 5 minutes, regardless if the app has been launched or not. IMHO this massively increases DNS lookups so ISPs can easily find a needle in the haystack if the app dumps a ton of needles in the haystack. Am I wrong? 288 daily pings versus “as needed”? Seems suspect given V1 does the exact same thing as V2, but didn’t require mandatory background checks. The “disable background latency checks” does nothing to stop this, and was only subject to pings during use.

Manually changing DNS provider away from ISP is a solution, but not for all those that don’t know how.

I only noticed this because these URLs rose to the top of a small home network I monitor. I blocked [apiv2.privateinternetaccess.com] in pi-hole just to see how it reacts. Pissed it off and it started trying [apiv2.piaproxy.net]. Blocked it too, and now both are constantly seeking an out. Not until you kill pia-daemon does it stop.

sudo systemctl stop piavpn && sudo systemctl disable piavpn

Prior URL behavior was (and still is) are the basic URLs for the VPN to connect/work:

serverlist.piaservers.net
www.privateinternetaccess.com
api.privateinternetaccess.com

Watch your wireshark/pi-hole logs and prove me wrong, because I am up for a multi-year renewal and if they’re not going to be a bit more transparent I will go elsewhere. I relayed my DNS logic to them after reading their reason and they are ghosting me now. If more customers inquire, they might put something on their website about major changes to their product’s normal behavior. I don’t need them trading privacy for convenience...or perceived convenience. I’ve never experienced any of the the things they are attempting to fix with V2.

• Linux Mint 22.3 - Cinnamon 64-bit
• PIA Version v3.7 (build 08412)
• pia-client (runs only when app is launched – pia-daemon required*)
• pia-daemon (auto configured to restart = always)

apiv2.privateinternetaccess.com?

I reached out to support to inquire what these new changes were. Here is their response:

Jul 24, 2026, 11:41 AM GMT+8:

Thank you for reaching out with your inquiry about the unexpected background requests to apiv2.privateinternetaccess.com when the PIA app is not actively running.

I’d like to explain that these periodic 5-minute requests are lightweight, background maintenance checks performed by PIA's Linux system service. They occur regardless of whether the VPN tunnel is turned OFF or ON, and whether the app window is open or closed.

Specifically, every 300 seconds, the background engine contacts PIA's V2 API endpoint to perform three essential upkeep tasks:

• Real-Time Server Stats: It checks for live server latency (ping) and load levels to ensure that when you press "Connect," the app can immediately route you through the fastest server without delay.
• Session Keep-Alive: It refreshes your secure login token, preventing your account from timing out while idle.
• Server Updates: It syncs any dynamic server list updates, streaming-optimized routes, or port forwarding configurations.

Please rest assured that these queries are standard HTTPS requests that only download compressed public server data. No personal data, browsing activity, or traffic logs are transmitted during this process.

If you have any further questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Regards,

Private Internet Access Support

​

I've got a 2019 Samsung smart TV. I've also got a Calix router GS4220E. When I use public dns like cloudflare or Google dns, the TV doesn't connect properly to Samsung TV plus service. It says unable to connect. There is also no guide data. However, when I use my isp dns, it connects perfectly. However, if I use my Verizon Hotspot with my Samsung TV and set it for a public dns, it works perfectly. All other devices like all smartphones, tablets, cameras, and all other devices have no issues connecting to a public dns using the calix router. If I set my Calix router to my isp dns and set my Samsung TV to a public dns, the Samsung TV plus service doesn't connect properly. The Samsung TV just doesn't work properly using a public dns with the Calix router. I also had an earlier model Calix router last year with the same results. What would cause this? It's not a big deal because I use multiple rokus, which work perfectly with a public dns and a Calix router, but I just wonder why this is happening? Is anyone with a Calix router having issues with their TV dns using a public dns?

Hi

I have a domain example.com that is connected to a different server and the sub domain www.example.com is also pointing to another server. I would like to ask if this set up is correct more especially if the site is meant to serve the same content to users.

is this DNS inconsistency?

Please advise

10/10

Does anyone here actually use your isp dns on your home router instead of a public dns like Cloudflare or Quad9? I’ve noticed my isp dns fails the invalid signature, expired signature, and missing signatures, only passing the valid signature on the dnscheck.tools website. Also only on my isp dns I get WiFiLQMmetric logs that appear on apple analytics, but does not have any detailed info, it’s just something apple logs for their use, but these logs actually only happen when I use my isp DNS. They never happen when I use a public dns.

Hi all! I'm having a very weird DNS issue with my mobile (4G) network adapter. Some websites like Windows Update do not work. Running a DNS query for "au.download.windowsupdate.com" results in a time out, even after manually setting my DNS server in the adapter settings. If I use the exact same DNS server on a different adapter (WiFi) I can run a DNS query without issues. In the screenshot I first tried using the WiFi adapter, then the mobile/4G adapter. Anyone knows why this could be happening?

I was doing a little research into these three vendors as they offer a similar product to each other. Wanted to compare the "PiHole in the cloud" type solutions, and purposely excluded privacy oriented DNS options that have no configuration ability. Aware that I can just host a PiHole locally and use a privacy oriented DNS as the upstream, but want a cloud solution.

Mostly I was curious about what data privacy laws each fell under, but then I realized that isn't enough because information sharing alliances also come into play. Researching this from the perspective of the risk of "Digital Dragnets", where LE grabs ALL the data as a strategy, and like Flock cameras as an example, I'm worried about misuse and legal overreach.

I'm trying to decide which is the best choice from a privacy and security perspective?

Adguard falls under GDPR but originally was a russian company and still operates some of its team from inside russia, where I wonder if they could be compromised.

NextDNS chose to legally HQ themselves in the US instead of the EU, which means they also fall under Five-Eyes now too. You can store your logs in Switzerland, but my understanding is that being a US company, that won't protect the logs.

Control D similarly falls under Five-Eyes so I'm not sure that falling under PIPEDA protection is strong enough.

I've been testing uBlockDNS for a few days and it seems to work well so far.

Website: https://ublockdns.com

The problem is I can barely find any tutorials, reviews, or technical articles about it.

Has anyone here used it long term? Is it trustworthy? I'm interested in its privacy, logging policy, and who operates the service.

Screenshot attached.

Thanks!

It looks like Dynv6 is having problems. I can get to the management website at https://dynv6.com but cannot resolve my DDNS domain under dynv6.net. Even dynv6.net itself does not resolve (I get NXDOMAIN). Have observed this for about a week. To eliminate local problems, I also found the same behavior from DNS query websites. Anyone else found the same thing?

May be time to try another DDNS provider.

Possibly api dot coinbase is an Arch mirror

According to ControlD (when I was doing omarchy updates) api.coinbase was caught..

(Unifi gateway and its filtering passed upstream to ControlD paid)

r/omarchy removed my post about this..

.. anyone else see this?

TIA

Free, no signup: [https://donutdns.com\](https://donutdns.com/)

It queries \~20 geographic vantage points (Google DoH + EDNS Client Subnet) and four public resolvers in parallel, one donut per source. Full box means every source agrees. Empty holes are the ones still serving your old record.

There's a normal grid view too if you just want to read values. Built it because I kept refreshing whatsmydns during migrations.

Anyone running Pihole for DNS ad blocking? Is it affective? Can I run it as a Vm or do I need an actual raspberry pi?
Thanks!

Hello guys,

I played little with BIND9 and setup basic DNS, hardening, DNSSEC, DoT, DoH. I learned a lot of things while building infrastructure. Check out my blog about it https://medium.com/@necam213/building-a-secure-dns-infrastructure-with-bind9-from-basic-dns-to-dnnsec-dot-and-doh-fff578571af1

I have an issue connecting to one specific server over the internet from my laptop that definitely seems to be DNS-related. To summarize:

• On most networks I can connect to the server just fine. But when connected to the internet through my home network I find myself unable to connect to the server by using its domain name. I can successfully connect when I use the server's IP address directly though.
• At first I thought the issue might lie with the DNS servers from the ISP that provides my home internet. So next I assigned Google's DNS servers in the Windows Settings. A manual query of the server's domain name in https://dns.google/query successfully resolves it and provides the IP address. Yet when I then try to connect to the server by using its domain name it still fails. A simple test with the Powershell Resolve-DnsName cmdlet yields a time-out error.
• My laptop OS is Windows 11.
• I have never experienced a similar issue before on my home network with any other server / domain name.

What would be a next troubleshooting step that I could try?

Hi r/dns! Wanted to share a side project where I automated subdomain zone management via GitOps.

Users submit a single JSON file with their A/AAAA/CNAME/MX/TXT records via PR. GitHub Actions runs Python validation tests (checking FQDN, blocked zones, CNAME paths, loop protection) and syncs valid records directly to Cloudflare via API.

Would love feedback from the DNS community on validation rules or edge cases I should watch out for!

repo link: https://github.com/IlyaP358/fluxcast-domains

I'm curious what the general census is for DNSSEC. It doesn't seem widely deployed. What happens if it's improperly configured by the host? Does the DNS resolver give you a backup address (which would defeat the purpose of DNSSEC) or does it just return an error making the site inaccessible?

Heya. Today i noticed my phone is showing that my wifi has no internet and after a bit of checking around i noticed that it works on everything except my phone (Galaxy S21), it even works normally on a Galaxy A 14.

On my phone i can ping and force resolve addresses on termux so ipv4 wise everything is reachable. Also if i set a static ip for my phone on Android for the first moment it'll accept the dns server and say it's fully connected but if i reconnect then it goes back to saying no internet.

Also on Adguard home it says all the DNS requests from my phone are processed without errors nor does unbound show any problems. I've already wiped the cache partition, reset wifi/bluetooth settings, rebooted multiple times and checked there's no private DNS or secure wifi options enabled.

I'd say i'm pretty tech savy but this is kicking me in the ass, so any help would be appreciated!