According to JohnM :
[ ... ]
It is better to keep your hosts file clean of external systems
(though it can be used to kill off a lot of spam sources and such. I
tend to do that in the routing tables, instead of in the local hosts
file.
[ ... ]
Late response on my part.. I don't know anything about routing tables,
I'm a very basic level geek, but everything in my hosts file is routed
to localhost. I've got a program that fills the graphics that the
browser (Mozilla) needs with tiny little dots so that the page doesn't
sit and wait 'till it times out, works well for me. I seldom see an ad
or flashing banner, if I see one I check it out and add it to the hosts
file, takes about 30 seconds if I can find the shortcut to the file
amongst all the stuff on my desktop screen.
O.K.
I've read that some WinXP machines have trouble with large hosts files
(in excess of 1Mb), which mine is, but I've noticed no problems so far.
First used the hosts file for directing stuff to localhost with Win98,
then 98SE, no problems with either of those running big host files
either. My Linux OS also doesn't seem to mind it a bit, just about the
first thing I did with that machine.
If anyone's interested, the ebay servers I've got directed to localhost
are ebaystatic.com, pics.ebaystatic.com, include.ebaystatic.com. Pages
load a lot faster and everything works.`
O.K. I'm sure that ebay would be displeased that you don't want
to "benefit" from all their hard work. :-)
Thanks for the suggestion, I looked up routing tables, need some time to
absorb more though.
One nice thing about routing tables is that it is easy to add an
entire block of IPs with a single command line. As an example (on a
unix system) the command line:
================================================== ====================
route add -net 59.0.0.0 -netmask 255.224.0.0 127.0.0.1
================================================== ====================
routes all IPs from 59.0.0.0 through 59.31.255.255 (all in Korea, FWIW)
to the localhost address (127.0.0.1). As a result, you can block a lot
more junk with fewer lines.
To be honest, I don't know *how* to do it on a Windows system,
and I suspect that it varies with which version of Windows you happen to
be running. Microsoft likes to re-invent all standards that they see,
so don't bet on it being easy. :-)
Enjoy,
DoN.
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