Nougat

That’s not what I was talking about.

Technitium does not (necessarily) use a third-party service, but sends all queries directly to the root nodes.

By default, any DNS server will look to the root servers for any query. The root servers only know what DNS servers are authoritative for top level domains (TLDs), and tell the client querying “Hey, go ask the “.com” (for example) server.”

That server knows what DNS servers are authoritative for the zones under .com, and says “Hey, go ask the “querieddomain” server.”

Then your machine asks that server for the “www” (for example) host, and that DNS server says “Here’s the IP.”

Unless the DNS server your machine is pointing at is configured to use a forwarder, wherein queries for any records that it isn’t authoritative for or aren’t in its local cache are resent to whatever DNS server is configured as the forwarder. The recursion like above is done between your DNS server and its forwarder, finally returning you an IP address when one is identified.

There’s a bit more to it than that, but that’s what I was talking about. Out of the box, a DNS server uses root hints, which are IP addresses of the root DNS servers. You would need to configure forwarder(s) in your DNS server if you desire them.

If that was the case, there would be a market for exactly 0 DNS servers.

I’m not sure what you mean by that, but it’s definitely the case.

For the record, any DNS server you choose to employ should default to only using the root servers. You would need to configure your own forwarder IP(s) to point to a general purpose resolver.

… censorship-free …

You should also be aware that even if you use root servers, a DNS server which is authoritative for the domain you are querying may well return different results depending on where in the world you are. This can be in order to direct you to an IP that is closer to you, or because “different global locations get different content” for any reason, including censorship and malicious goals. The latter is definitely less likely than the former, but it’s just as possible.