From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Dec 12 12:05:51 2007 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2F3E916A41B for ; Wed, 12 Dec 2007 12:05:51 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from xfb52@dial.pipex.com) Received: from astro.systems.pipex.net (astro.systems.pipex.net [62.241.163.6]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AF76A13C45A for ; Wed, 12 Dec 2007 12:05:50 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from xfb52@dial.pipex.com) Received: from [192.168.23.2] (62-31-10-181.cable.ubr05.edin.blueyonder.co.uk [62.31.10.181]) by astro.systems.pipex.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 35905E000445; Wed, 12 Dec 2007 12:05:35 +0000 (GMT) Message-ID: <475FCE90.4060506@dial.pipex.com> Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 12:05:36 +0000 From: Alex Zbyslaw User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-GB; rv:1.7.13) Gecko/20061205 X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Erich Dollansky References: <475E0190.7030909@pacific.net.sg> <200712111718.05876.nvass@teledomenet.gr> <475EAC9D.1020902@pacific.net.sg> <20071211084309.A16234@wonkity.com> <475EB887.6070902@pacific.net.sg> <475EC215.8060004@dial.pipex.com> <475F4209.8080507@pacific.net.sg> In-Reply-To: <475F4209.8080507@pacific.net.sg> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: FreeBSD Questions Subject: Re: performance impact of large /etc/hosts files X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 12:05:51 -0000 Erich Dollansky wrote: > Alex Zbyslaw wrote: > >> Erich Dollansky wrote: >> >> Assuming I've understood your initial post correctly, then I do the >> same, redirecting some dozen ad sites to a local web server. With a > > > this is how I started. Then friends did the same. We exchanged the > files. We added hosts files from the Internet. > >> dozen or so aliases I've never noticed any difference in performance, >> but I suspect you have rather more than that :-) I could never quite be > > > I also do not notice a difference. Especially news sites with all the > ads are even faster as there is no waiting for the ads. > >> I'm pretty sure you could also do the same with a local DNS server, if > > > This is what I am thinking of since some time but I never did. > > It would have the additional advantage of faster name resolution. > > Having a DNS on every machine seems like a real overkill to me. Why would you have DNS on every machine? I don't know what your setup is like, but any separate network (like your home, your office) would only need one(*) DNS server for the entire network. Of course, everyone then gets their ads blocked, not just you :-) No way to make it per-user that I can think of. But, you could run 1 DNS and only point hosts which wished to participate in the ad blocking at that DNS server and let others do their resolution however they normally do it (ISP DNS, company DNS). > >> There's no clean solutions to getting different lookups per-user that I > > > The clen solution is hosts. It's not per-user, which was what you originally asked. > >> Unclean solutions might include something like making the hosts file > > > This is something I would like to avoid. If you want different name resolution per user, then I see little alternative to something like this. I'm not even sure it's possible, to be honest, but then name resolution was never expected to be per user :-( --Alex Yes, you should probably have a second, slave DNS if your network is more than a couple of hosts. Setting up a DNS is not actually that hard.