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Comment by maaaats | Hacker News Reader

Would wildcard support in hosts files be too heavy for the performance needed? Most of these are subdomains that *.facebook.com would have blocked.

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My first impression when I saw it was something along the lines of "this would be so much cleaner if one were writing this as a dnsmasq config"

I agree. From this project I discover FreeContributor [1], which use dnsmasq has a DNSBL.

[1] https://github.com/tbds/FreeContributor

Is it possible to apply this at the network level? I want to update my home router easily so that all devices in my home can benefit, not just my own laptop (since most of these lists are just updating /etc/hosts)

If your router runs dnsmasq, it should be possible. It would depend upon your router, however, and how much control it allows you over the dnsmasq configuration.

Is it possible to apply this at the network level?

Yes. Please check pi-hole project [1] or flash your router with open-wrt/dd-wrt and run dnsmasq with the FreeContributor lists.

[1] https://pi-hole.net/

sweeeet thanks.

do people usually do this directly on their FIOS router or is it easier to get a separate wifi router?

oh you configure the fios router to use that as your dns:

https://pi-hole.net/faq/can-i-set-the-pi-hole-to-be-the-dns-...

good stuff

> Would wildcard support in hosts files be too heavy for the performance needed?

Can anyone explain me why wildcard support for blocklists would require more performance?

Assuming it's just basic wildcards, not full regex.

Seems to me that 1) with wildcards you need to check less bytes per entry and 2) since the list itself will be shorter you need to check less entries.

Do any of these filtering tools compile the list (offline) to a minimal state machine or a trie? That would probably max performance (and benefits from wildcards too).

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