🚀 NetShield is Live & Open-Source! 🛡️
A few days ago, I posted about building a 100% native Android VPN and privacy engine. Today, NetShield v1.0.0 is officially launched on GitHub!
Building a local network protection engine from scratch came with major technical challenges and engineering learnings:
💡 Key Engineering Learnings & Challenges: • Network Level vs. Application Level: I learned why DNS-level VPNs excel at blocking 3rd-party ad networks, pop-ups, and tracking domains across 100% of apps, but cannot block inlined first-party video streams (like YouTube or Instagram) without breaking main video playback. • Overcoming Battery Doze Mode: Solved Android OEM background battery killers by implementing a zero-CPU CountDownLatch wait thread and an in-memory LRU DNS cache to keep idle battery drain under ~1–2%. • Push Notification Reliability: Added specialized fast-path routing for FCM (mtalk.google.com) and WhatsApp push sockets so real-time notifications deliver instantly even in deep sleep.
⚡ Core Architecture Highlights: • 100% Native Kotlin: Built using Android standard library (VpnService, DatagramSocket) with zero 3rd-party C++ binaries. • O(k) Reverse Label Trie: Instant domain sinkholing for ads, trackers, and adult platforms in < 1ms. • Per-App Firewall: Resolves socket owner UIDs (getConnectionOwnerUid) for granular internet control. • Room DB v5 Persistence: Local SQLite storage for rules, stats, and custom domains.
📂 GitHub Repository: https://github.com/FardeenSayyed/NetShield
🌐 Interactive Architecture Diagram: https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/FardeenSayyed/NetShield/blob/main/docs/netshield_architecture.html
📥 Download Release APK: https://github.com/FardeenSayyed/NetShield/releases/tag/v1.0.0
💼 Looking for Custom Android & Full-Stack Development?
I help startups and businesses build high-performance Native Android Apps (Kotlin / Jetpack Compose), Web Applications / CMS, and Firebase Backends.
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