Windows 11 23H2 preview version already supports DNS over TLS

Microsoft released Windows 11 Dev and Windows Server 2022 Preview Build 25158 system update. Windows 11 Dev Preview Build 25158 includes many new features, including different search styles, notification badges in widgets, Media Player support for CD ripping, and more.

Another feature briefly mentioned in a Microsoft Windows blog post is DNS over TLS (DoT), a networking enhancement now available to Windows 11 Preview users. DNS over TLS (DoT) is an alternative to DNS over HTTPS (DoH) designed for encrypted web traffic. DoH, already present in Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022, enables DNS traffic to be routed over port 443 as an HTTPS stream. Meanwhile, DoT routes encrypted DNS traffic through a TLS tunnel on dedicated port 853.

DoT can provide better network performance in some use cases, but loses some of the flexibility that DoH provides. Microsoft has also published a guide to enabling DoT, currently available for Windows 11 and Windows Server Preview Build 25158:

  • Go to Settings -> Network (will load a view of the current default network connection)
  • Tap Wi-Fi or Ethernet (probably the first row)
  • Click on “Hardware Properties” (probably the bottom row)
  • In the “DNS Server Assignments:” row, click the Edit button
  • Turn on the “IPv4” or “IPv6” switch
  • Type the IP address of the DoT server you want to test in the Preferred DNS text box
  • Save and confirm that “(unencrypted)” appears in the “IPv4 DNS Servers:” row in the configuration list near the bottom of this view

Finally, run these commands in a command prompt with administrator privileges:

netsh dns add global dot=yes
netsh dns add encryption server=[the-ip-address-configured-as-the-DNS-resolver] dothost=: autoupgrade=yes
ipconfig /flushdns

It should be noted that port 853 is currently the only port that can be specified for DoT, and custom configuration is currently not supported. Build 25158 is a preview build of Windows 11 version 23H2, which means that if the feature is successfully tested, it will be officially released in the second half of 2023. The next major release of Windows 11 is version 22H2, which is expected to be released this fall but does not include DoT features.

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