Unbound Setup Tutorial on OpenWrt 1. What Is Unbound? Unbound is a validating, recursive, and caching DNS resolver focused on security, privacy, and performance. Unbound works by querying DNS Root Servers directly, then continuing to TLD and authoritative servers, without relying on public DNS providers such as Google DNS or Cloudflare. Main advantages of Unbound: No third-party DNS dependency Full DNSSEC validation support Can operate as a local recursive resolver DNS caching for faster responses Lightweight and suitable for OpenWrt routers With Unbound, your OpenWrt router becomes a fully independent DNS resolver for the entire local network.