I have been writing about sovereignty in AI infrastructure for weeks now, from the Fable 5 shutdown to local AI boxes to open-source models you run on your own hardware. But sovereignty starts at a layer most people never think about: DNS. Every time you type a URL, your device asks a DNS server to translate it into an IP address. That server is usually your ISP’s, which means your ISP sees every domain you visit, logs it, and in many jurisdictions sells the aggregate data. A Raspberry Pi on your desk can fix that for under $100.

What you need

A Raspberry Pi 4 Model B with 4GB of RAM is the floor. The 8GB version gives you headroom if you plan to run Pi-hole alongside the DNS resolver. You need a Class 10 microSD card with at least 32GB, a solid 5V/3A USB-C power supply, and an Ethernet cable, because running a DNS server over Wi-Fi adds latency that defeats the purpose. Total hardware cost: roughly $80 to $95 depending on the kit.

The Pi 4’s quad-core Cortex-A72 at 1.8 GHz handles DNS resolution without breaking a sweat. The memory breakdown for a typical home network: about 1GB for the OS, 200MB for DNS caching, 300MB for the resolver software, and 100MB buffer for concurrent requests. That leaves 2.4GB free on a 4GB model, which is more than enough.

Setting it up: Unbound as a recursive resolver

You have two main choices: BIND (the industry standard, heavier) or Unbound (lighter, faster, built for exactly this use case). I recommend Unbound for a home or small-office setup. It supports DNSSEC out of the box, which validates that the DNS responses you receive have not been tampered with.

Start with a fresh Raspberry Pi OS image flashed using the official Raspberry Pi Imager. Boot, connect via SSH, and update everything:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

Install Unbound:

sudo apt install unbound unbound-host -y

Download the root hints file (the list of root DNS servers that Unbound uses to resolve from scratch rather than forwarding to Google or Cloudflare):

sudo wget -O /var/lib/unbound/root.hints https://www.internic.net/domain/named.cache

Edit the Unbound configuration:

sudo nano /etc/unbound/unbound.conf

A minimal but production-ready configuration for a home network looks like this:

server:
    interface: 0.0.0.0
    port: 53
    do-ip4: yes
    do-ip6: yes
    do-udp: yes
    do-tcp: yes
    
    root-hints: "/var/lib/unbound/root.hints"
    
    # Privacy and security
    hide-identity: yes
    hide-version: yes
    harden-glue: yes
    harden-dnssec-stripped: yes
    use-caps-for-id: yes
    
    # Performance
    num-threads: 4
    msg-cache-size: 64m
    rrset-cache-size: 128m
    cache-min-ttl: 3600
    cache-max-ttl: 86400
    prefetch: yes
    
    # Access control
    access-control: 192.168.1.0/24 allow
    access-control: 127.0.0.0/8 allow

The key detail: this configuration makes Unbound a recursive resolver. It does not forward your queries to Google (8.8.8.8) or Cloudflare (1.1.1.1). It resolves from the root servers directly. That means no third-party DNS provider sees your traffic. Your Pi talks to the authoritative nameservers for each domain and caches the results locally. After the first lookup, subsequent queries for the same domain resolve in under a millisecond from cache.

Testing and deploying

Restart Unbound and test:

sudo systemctl restart unbound
dig @localhost example.com

If you get a response with an ANSWER section, the resolver is working. Set your router’s DHCP settings to distribute the Pi’s IP address as the primary DNS server for all devices on the network. Every device on your network now resolves through your Pi, with no ISP in the middle.

Why this matters beyond the tutorial

I keep coming back to the same thesis across everything I write about infrastructure: control matters. The Fable 5 shutdown proved that cloud-hosted AI can be revoked. The EVO-X2 proved that local AI inference removes that dependency. A Pi running Unbound does the same thing at the network layer: your DNS queries stay on hardware you own, resolved from root servers without any intermediary that can log, filter, or monetize your traffic.

The cost is sub-$100 and an hour of setup. The value compounds: lower latency (cached queries resolve in microseconds), privacy (no ISP DNS logging), security (DNSSEC validation), and full visibility into every DNS query on your network. For a home office or a small business, this is the simplest infrastructure upgrade that delivers measurable results in performance and autonomy. You are not renting DNS from someone else. You own the stack.