Resolver policies

Beta

By default, Gateway sends DNS requests to 1.1.1.1, Cloudflare’s public DNS resolver, for resolution. Enterprise users can instead create Gateway policies to route DNS queries to custom resolvers.

flowchart TD
    %% Accessibility
    accTitle: How Gateway routes DNS queries
    accDescr: Flowchart describing the order Cloudflare Gateway routes a DNS query from an endpoint through DNS and resolver policies back to the user.

    %% Flowchart
    user(["User"])-->endpoint[/"Gateway DNS endpoint"/]

    endpoint-->query["DNS policy (query)"]

    query-->resolver["Resolver policy"]

    resolver--"Routes to </br>custom resolver"-->response["DNS policy (response)"]

    response--"Returns response"-->user

Gateway will route user traffic to your configured DNS resolver based on the matching policy, even if your resolvers’ IP addresses overlap.

Use cases

You may use resolver policies if you require access to non-publicly routed domains, such as private network services or internal resources. You may also use resolver policies if you need to access a protected DNS service or want to simplify DNS management for multiple locations.

If your resolver is only reachable by a client device and not by Gateway via a Cloudflare tunnel, Magic WAN tunnel, or other public Internet connections, you should configure Local Domain Fallback for your device. If both Local Domain Fallback and resolver policies are configured for the same device, Cloudflare will apply your client-side Local Domain Fallback rules first. If you onboard DNS queries to Gateway with the WARP client and route them with resolver policies, the source IP of the queries will be the IP address assigned by the WARP client.

Resolver connections

Resolver policies support TCP and UDP connections. Custom resolvers can point to the Internet via IPv4 or IPv6, or to a private network service, such as a Magic tunnel. Policies default to port 53. You can change which port your resolver uses by customizing it in your policy.

You can protect your authoritative nameservers from DDoS attacks by enabling DNS Firewall.

Cloudflare Tunnel

You can configure connections to a private resolver connected to Cloudflare with Cloudflare Tunnel. To ensure cloudflared can route UDP traffic to your resolver, connect your tunnel via QUIC.

For more information on connecting a private DNS resolver to Cloudflare with Cloudflare Tunnel, refer to Private DNS.

Magic WAN

To enable connections to a private resolver connected to Cloudflare via Magic WAN, contact your account team.

Available DNS endpoints

Resolver policies can route queries for resolution from the following DNS endpoints:

IPv4
IPv6
DNS over HTTPS (DoH)
DNS over TLS (DoT)
DNS queries generated by Cloudflare Browser Isolation and Clientless Web Isolation
DNS queries generated by proxy endpoints

Gateway will filter, resolve, and log your queries regardless of endpoint.

Create a resolver policy

In Zero Trust ↗, go to Gateway > Resolver policies.
Select Add a policy.
Create an expression for your desired traffic. For example, you can resolve a hostname for an internal service:

Selector Operator Value
Host in internal.example.com

Make sure your destination is not subject to Local Domain Fallback.
In Select DNS resolver, choose Configure custom DNS resolvers.
Enter the IP addresses of your custom DNS resolver.

As you enter an IP address, Gateway will search through your virtual networks configured in Zero Trust.
In Network, choose whether to route queries publicly (to the Internet) or privately (to a private network service).
(Optional) Enter a custom port for each IP address.
Select Create policy.

Selector	Operator	Value
Host	in	`internal.example.com`

Custom resolvers are saved to your account for future use. You can add up to 10 IPv4 and 10 IPv6 addresses to a policy.

When a user’s query matches a resolver policy, Gateway will send the query to your listed resolvers in the following order:

Public resolvers
Private resolvers behind the default virtual network for your account
Private resolvers behind a custom virtual network

Gateway will cache the fastest resolver for use in subsequent queries. Resolver priority is cached on a per user basis for each data center.

For more information on creating a DNS policy, refer to DNS policies.

Selectors

Content Categories

Use this selector to filter domains belonging to specific content categories.

UI name	API example	Evaluation phase
Content Categories	`any(dns.content_category[*] in {1})`	Before DNS resolution

DNS Resolver IP

Use this selector to apply policies to DNS queries that arrived to your Gateway Resolver IP address aligned with a registered DNS location. For most Gateway customers, this is an IPv4 anycast address and policies created using this IPv4 address will apply to all DNS locations. However, each DNS location has a dedicated IPv6 address and some Gateway customers have been supplied with a dedicated IPv4 address — these both can be used to apply policies to specific registered DNS locations.

UI name	API example	Evaluation phase
DNS Resolver IP	`any(dns.resolved_ip[*] == 198.51.100.0)`	Before DNS resolution

DoH Subdomain

Use this selector to match against DNS queries that arrive via DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) destined for the DoH endpoint configured for each DNS location. For example, you can use a DNS location with a DoH endpoint of abcdefg.cloudflare-gateway.com by choosing the DoH Subdomain selector and inputting a value of abcdefg.

UI name	API example	Evaluation phase
DOH Subdomain	`dns.doh_subdomain == "abcdefg"`	Before DNS resolution

Domain

Use this selector to match against a domain and all subdomains. For example, you can match example.com and its subdomains, such as www.example.com.

UI name	API example	Evaluation phase
Domain	`any(dns.domains[*] == "example.com")`	Before DNS resolution

Host

Use this selector to match against only the hostname specified. For example, you can match test.example.com but not example.com or www.test.example.com.

UI name	API example	Evaluation phase
Host	`dns.fqdn == "test.example.com"`	Before DNS resolution

Location

Use this selector to apply policies to a specific Gateway DNS location or set of locations.

UI name	API example	Evaluation phase
Location	`dns.location in {"location_uuid_1" "location_uuid_2"}`	Before DNS resolution

Query Record Type

Use this selector to choose the DNS resource record type that you would like to apply policies against. For example, you can match A records for a domain but not MX records.

UI name	API example	Evaluation phase
Query Record Type	`dns.query_rtype == "TXT"`	Before DNS resolution

Security Categories

Use this selector to match domains (and optionally, IP addresses) belonging to specific security categories.

UI name	API example	Evaluation phase
Security Categories	`any(dns.security_category[*] in {1})`	Before DNS resolution

Source Continent

Use this selector to filter based on the continent where the query arrived to Gateway from.

Geolocation is determined from the device’s public IP address (typically assigned by the user’s ISP). To specify a continent, enter its two-letter code into the Value field:

Continent	Code
Africa	`AF`
Antarctica	`AN`
Asia	`AS`
Europe	`EU`
North America	`NA`
Oceania	`OC`
South America	`SA`
Tor network	`T1`

UI name	API example	Evaluation phase
Source Continent IP Geolocation	`dns.src.geo.continent == “North America”`	Before DNS resolution

Source Country

Use this selector to filter based on the country where the query arrived to Gateway from.

Geolocation is determined from the device’s public IP address (typically assigned by the user’s ISP). To specify a country, enter its ISO 3166-1 Alpha-2 code ↗ in the Value field.

UI name	API example	Evaluation phase
Source Country IP Geolocation	`dns.src.geo.country == “RU”`	Before DNS resolution

Source IP

Use this selector to apply policies to the source IP address of DNS queries. For example, this could be the WAN IP address of the stub resolver used by your organization to send queries to Gateway.

UI name	API example	Evaluation phase
Source IP	`dns.src_ip == 198.51.100.0`	Before DNS resolution

Users

Identity-based selectors include:

SAML Attributes
User Email
User Group Emails
User Group IDs
User Group Names
User Name

To use identity-based selectors, enable Gateway with WARP in the Zero Trust WARP client and enroll your user in your organization. For more information, refer to Identity-based policies.

Comparison operators

Comparison operators are the way Gateway matches traffic to a selector. When you choose a Selector in the dashboard policy builder, the Operator dropdown menu will display the available options for that selector.

Operator	Meaning
is	equals the defined value
is not	does not equal the defined value
in	matches at least one of the defined values
not in	does not match any of the defined values
in list	in a pre-defined list of values
not in list	not in a pre-defined list of values
matches regex	regex evaluates to true
does not match regex	regex evaluates to false
greater than	exceeds the defined number
greater than or equal to	exceeds or equals the defined number
less than	below the defined number
less than or equal to	below or equals the defined number

Value

In the Value field, you can input a single value when using an equality comparison operator (such as is) or multiple values when using a containment comparison operator (such as in). Additionally, you can use regular expressions (or regex) to specify a range of values for supported selectors.

Regular expressions

Gateway uses Rust to evaluate regular expressions. The Rust implementation is slightly different than regex libraries used elsewhere. For more information, refer to our guide for Wildcards. To evaluate if your regex matches, you can use Rustexp ↗.

If you want to match multiple values, you can use the pipe symbol (|) as an OR operator. In Gateway, you do not need to use an escape character (\) before the pipe symbol. For example, the following policy blocks requests to two hostnames if either appears in a request header:

Selector	Operator	Value	Action
Host	matches regex	`.\whispersystems.org\|.\signal.org`	Block

In addition to regular expressions, you can use logical operators to match multiple values.

Logical operators

To evaluate multiple conditions in an expression, select the And logical operator. These expressions can be compared further with the Or logical operator.

Operator	Meaning
And	match all of the conditions in the expression
Or	match any of the conditions in the expression

The Or operator will only work with conditions in the same expression group. For example, you cannot compare conditions in Traffic with conditions in Identity.

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