# Origins

How came atomdns into existence? As being the author of [Go DNS](https://github.com/miekg/dns) and now [Go
DNS2](https://codeberg.org/miekg/dns), I pondered back [in 2016](https://miek.nl/2016/march/10/caddy-dns/) if
I should write a DNS server. Four days later [I had a working prototype](https://miek.nl/2016/march/14/first-light/).
This in turn was prompted by a brief involvement in [SkyDNS](https://github.com/skynetservices/skydns/), which
was also a very good idea, but the DNS implementation could have been better (hence my involvement).

This eventually morphed in [CoreDNS](https://miek.nl/2016/march/18/announcing-coredns/) and everything that
followed from that. In 2023-ish I stopped doing as much work as I did on CoreDNS, and ceased doing DNS and Go
development altogether for a while.

In late 2025 it started itching again and I wanted to improve Go DNS, so I forked it into [Go DNS2](https://codeberg.org/miekg/dns), and
added a lot of things from CoreDNS into _dnstest_ and _dnsutil_ sub-packages. The code was cleaner, faster and
uses less memory by improving buffer management, see [this feedback for instance](https://codeberg.org/miekg/dns/issues/362).
Working on a DNS library, without involving real, running code is a risk, as you may end up making things that
are hard to use or don't work in practice. To prevent this from happening I needed a server, and I wanted a
new server, hence atomdns was born.

atomdns is much leaner than CoreDNS, because it better leverages the new code that is now available in Go DNS,
it's also faster because of that. It has the same model, chaining middleware, now called [handlers](/handlers)
in atomdns. And one other big difference is that the order of handlers in the configuration file _matters_. As
this _is_ the executing order when atomdns is running your handlers.

The focus for atomdns is also much more on running locally, instead of running in the cloud and serving
whatever data is available there. In other words: atomdns will never have a Kubernetes handler.

## Differences With CoreDNS

atomdns looks like CoreDNS, but is _different_ under the covers. A short list of changes is:

1. Dynamic ordering of [handlers](/handlers) (plugins).
2. All functionally is handled by the [handlers](/handlers), the core server is even smaller.
3. Uses [Go DNS v2](https://codeberg.org/miekg/dns).
4. No more TSIG and other DNS features directly in the (dnsv2) server.
5. A {{< global >}} plugin for server wide configuration.