Use Control D

Control D is a customizable anycast DNS service that blocks malicious threats, unwanted content, trackers, and ads. Tailscale uses Control D with DNS over HTTPS (DoH). You can configure Control D as a global nameserver to leverage Control D throughout your tailnet. You cannot use Control D as a split DNS server (also known as a restricted nameserver).

Prerequisites

Using Control D with Tailscale requires:

• Tailscale v1.70.0 or later
• A Control D endpoint.

Use Control D as a global nameserver

Use Control D as a global nameserver to route DNS queries from all devices in your tailnet to Control D.

To add Control D as a global nameserver:

1. Open the DNS page of the admin console.
2. Go to Nameservers, then select Add nameserver > Control D.
3. Enter the resolver ID for your Control D endpoint.
4. Select Save to save Control D endpoint as a global nameserver for your tailnet.
5. Select Override DNS servers to force devices to use Control D as a global nameserver instead of the locally configured DNS settings.

Use different Control D profiles for different devices

Control D lets you create multiple profiles (also known as profile IDs) to control access for different types of devices. For example, you can create an administrator Control D profile and a user Control D profile for your devices.

To specify a different profile than the global profile for a specific Tailscale device:

1. Set up Control D as a global nameserver for your tailnet.
2. Add a nodeAttrs section to your tailnet policy file and set a target for the devices that apply to the Control D profile. You can use tags, users, groups, or *.
3. Add an attr section with controld:<profile-id>, where <profile-id> is your Control D profile ID.

For example, in your tailnet policy file:

    {
        "grants": ["..."],
        "nodeAttrs": [
            {
                "target": ["user@example.com", "tag:server"],
                "attr": [
                    "controld:<profile-id>",
                ],
            },
        ],
    }

Priority for tagged devices

Since nodeAttrs are additive and can apply to multiple devices, you can use priority values to control which Control D profile takes precedence. For example, a single tailnet node might match multiple profiles. One targeting tag:server, and another targeting both tag:server and tag:secure-server.

If the tag:server profile includes a Control D override, but you want a more specific override for tag:secure-server, you can assign a higher priority to that profile. To do this, add a priority suffix ?priority=1 and ?priority=2 (and so on) to the attr entries. The higher the priority number, the higher the priority.

For example, in these attr entries:

    {
        "nodeAttrs": [
            {
                "target": ["tag:server"],
                "attr": [
                    "controld:<profile-id-1>?priority=1",
                ],
            },
            {
                "target": ["tag:secure-server"],
                "attr": [
                    "controld:<profile-id-2>?priority=2",
                ],
            },
        ],
    }

In the above example, devices with only tag:server match the lower priority <profile-id-1> profile. Devices with both tag:server and tag:secure-server match both profiles, but Tailscale prioritizes <profile-id-2> because of the higher priority.

Tailscale strips the priority suffix before sending the data to Control D.