KadNode - P2P DNS

July 19, 2026 ยท View on GitHub

KadNode intercepts .p2p DNS queries on the system level (e.g from the browser) and resolves them via the mainline BitTorrent DHT network to IP addresses.

For IP address authentication,TLS is supported as well as public key domain names.

Features

  • Support for two kinds of domains:
    1. public key domains as <public-key>.p2p
      • No need to exchange any further keys/certificates
      • Uses secp256r1 ECC key pairs
    2. named domains like yourdomain.com.p2p
      • Needs pre-shared certificates (self-signed root certificates or e.g. Let's Encrypt)
      • Uses TLS session handshake for authentication
  • IPv4/IPv6 support
  • UPnP/NAT-PMP support
  • Local peer discovery
  • Small size / ~100KB depending on features / ~50KB compressed
  • Command line control program
  • NSS support through /etc/nsswitch.conf
  • DNS server interface and DNS proxy
    • Handles A (IPv4),AAAA (IPv6), and SRV requests
  • Packages for ArchLinux, Debian, FreeBSD, MacOSX, OpenWrt, Windows
  • Peer file import/export on startup/shutdown and every 24h
  • Uses sha256 hash method

Documentation

Installation

You can download the latest package from releases page.

OpenWrt

From official package repository: apk install kadnode

Debian/Ubuntu

From PPA repository:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:stokito/kadnode
sudo apt update
sudo apt install kadnode

Or install a downloaded package with dpkg -i kadnode_*.deb

FreeBSD

From repository: pkg install kadnode

Or install a downloaded package with pkg install kadnode-*.txz

ArchLinux

From repository: yay -S kadnode

Or install a downloaded package with pacman -U kadnode-*.pkg.tar.xz

Build from sources

Install libraries and their headers. On Debian/Ubuntu use:

sudo apt install libmbedtls-dev, libnatpmp-dev, libminiupnpc-dev

Checkout code and compile KadNode:

git clone https://github.com/mwarning/KadNode.git
cd KadNode
# basic features and debug mode
FEATURES="bob tls cmd dns debug" make
# all features
FEATURES="bob tls cmd lpd dns nss natpmp upnp debug" make

Finally, start KadNode:

./build/kadnode --peer bttracker.debian.org:6881 --peer router.bittorrent.com:6881 --peer router.utorrent.com:6881 --peerfile peers.txt

This also add some popular static peers to bootstrap into the global DHT network. Good peers will written to peers.txt. KadNode will also look for local peers, but those are often absent.

To install use:

sudo make install install_nss

To uninstall:

sudo make uninstall uninstall_nss

License

MIT/X11

Authors