Hosts file vs. Firewall

For the sake of speeding up webpage loading, I have been tweaking my hosts file. The results are mixed. Some sites which are ad-heavy are far faster, while others seem to stall for a second while the respective blocked domains are loading (e.g. "waiting for statcounter.etc").

It occurred to me that the hosts file sits behind the firewall, so is there a case for transferring the domains listed in the hosts file to the firewall block list and stop the pages before the PC gets a chance to examine them?

adblockplus is way better.

Even if you move the blocking to your firewall the links to the blocked domains will still be contained within the html of the page and will still be looked up as the page is processed.

You really need something that prevents your browser processing those elements of the page content.

If you are using Firefox try using the Adblockplus, Better Privacy and Ghostery plugins - that takes care of any advert content, tracking cookies and "super" cookies (LSO blighters!). Personally I also use NoScript to selectively disable Javascript - but that's more a security consideration.

I use "adblockplus" but believe and accept it does slow thing's down a tad.

If your main objective is speed, then I think using your own DNS resolver and blocking the ad sites with that is the best option.
See http://npr.me.uk/unbound.html

Alternatively try "Acrylic DNS proxy", that can use a standard hosts file and IMO is faster then using the hosts file in windows.
http://mayakron.altervista.org/support/browse.php?pa...

Have you tried "eDexter", that may prevent some lag in web pages which have some content from a hosts file domain.
http://www.pyrenean.com/eDexter

(To all)

Well I had a 307K hosts file, which was the MVPS one plus a couple of dozen other domains I came across. Just for fun I exported Kaspersky's banner blocker list for safe keeping, then appended it with the 307K list and deleted all the hosts file (leaving the default two lines).

Browsing is much, much faster. Strange that when I first created the hosts list browsing was a little delayed (about a half-second more per page, but after a while it became faster. Then when I did a CCleaner cleanup, it got slow again.

Almost as if the hosts file was cached via SuperFetch or something. So browsing is super-fast and the banner blocker is working fine. I suppose the banner blocker is designed to work in a responsive manner, while the hosts file is less so.

Handy link btw:

http://www.numion.com/Stopwatch/index.html

adblockplus doesn't slow down browsing.

Does for me!

Get a better PC / sort your bad config. If anything, it speeds up browsing because it blocks bloated flash ads, etc.

PC and config are both fine thank you.

Clearly not, if you're seeing a performance hit. Chrome is lightning fast.

Messing like this just isn't necessary.

& ad blockers if anything seem to slow things down more than just loading the ads.

The real solution is to get a quicker connection, connect via Ethernet, possibly tweak the interleaving with the ISP and that's it.

In reply to a post by NPR:

I use "adblockplus" but believe and accept it does slow thing's down a tad.

That seems odd. I use AdMuncher and it speeds up loading. I wonder what Adblockplus is doing that could counteract the time spent downloading adverts?

Mmm. I'm inclined to go with that. I can't speak for ad blockers myself, but I seem to be blocking them with an ad blocker.

By the way I had added "emp.bbci.co.uk" to my blocked list, as I couldn't see what purpose it was serving. Since then I've discovered that with it blocked, things like the 'election 2010' dynamic map were blocked. That's the only example I've seen so far though. It may enable bbci flash stuff.

Ahh:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/futuremedia/technica...

EMP (Embedded Media Player)

The standard Flash-based media player for BBC online.

Just took a peek at the Scotsman newspaper website. Ye gods!

scotsman.com
grapeshot-media.net
.jpscotland.co.uk
pagead2.googlesyndication.com
a.tribalfusion.com
b.scorecardresearch.com
localstars.co.uk
statse.webtrendslive.com
singletemplate.jpress.co.uk
johnston.grapeshot.co.uk
s3.amazonaws.com
googleads.g.doubleclick.net
t.mookie1.com
ad.uk.doubleclick.net
b3-uk.mookie1.com
ads.revsci.net
servedby.flashtalking.com
cdn.flashtalking.com
konac.kontera.com
secure-uk.imrworldwide.com
cdn.cxense.com
konax.kontera.com
ds.serving-sys.com
dnn506yrbagrg.cloudfront.net
richmedia-cdn.localstars.com
comcluster.cxense.com
ad.yieldmanager.com
tags.expo9.exponential.com
pix04.revsci.net
js.revsci.net
bs.serving-sys.com
view.atdmt.com
kona5.kontera.com
ad.doubleclick.net
ec.atdmt.com
kona.kontera.com
tag.admeld.com
google.com
editorial.jpress.co.uk
euwidget.imshopping.com
pubads.g.doubleclick.net

They have about every advertising system in there. All but the top one blocked, and the page is fine. Sheesh!