Acrylic DNS Proxy Question

This software has been mentioned in a number of posts so I decided to try
it. Installed on a Win7 test system and made the changes to 127.0.0.1 and
::1 for DNS servers.

My question is: Which HOSTS file is Acrylic using?

I have a large HOSTS file developed by Steven Black (Github) - do I merge
this with one of Acrylic's or does Acrylic use it already?

Thanks

Bob S

On 28/10/2018 00:42, Bob_S wrote:
This software has been mentioned in a number of posts so I decided to
try it. Installed on a Win7 test system

So go and post in Windows 7 newsgroup. What made you think that Windows
10 users would be interested in the problems of Windows 7 users? Are
you on drugs again?



--
With over 950 million devices now running Windows 10, customer
satisfaction is higher than any previous version of windows.

"Bob_S" wrote

| My question is: Which HOSTS file is Acrylic using?
|

I think the way it works... and a quick check with Filemon
seems to confirm it... the browser checks HOSTS. If the URL
is not there it calls the DNS server. Typically that would
be set in your network settings. So, for instance, say you
use OpenDNS for DNS. Your listing in Network should be
something like 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220. You then
change that to 127.0.0.1 when installing Acrylic and you
set 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220 in AcrylicConfiguration.ini.

The result is that when the browser calls DNS, the call
gets received by Acrylic -- it's a DNS proxy service -- which
then checks its HOSTS file and its own DNS cache (which
is configurable in terms of expiry time). If it doesn't find
the URL then it calls 208.67.222.222.

So both HOSTS files are used. It's extremely fast to check
a text file for a string, so it shouldn't be inefficient, but
with Acrylic you can afford to greatly shrink or remove
your existing HOSTS file, if you think it's worth the trouble.

The problem I find with those is that they include things
like www.alsrecordstore.de or www.doubleclick.kr. There
are hundreds of specific URLs I'll never visit.

Nevertheless, I have both HOSTS files with maybe 100-300
items and I still find most sites load virtually instantly. (Which
I credit to the fact that I block script routinely and also
block the vast majority of external linking via HOSTS. In
other words, the time needed to read 2 HOSTS is more
than made up for by not calling doubleclick, google fonts,
google tag manager, scorecardresearch, etc.)

"Mayayana" wrote in message news

"Bob_S" wrote

| My question is: Which HOSTS file is Acrylic using?
|

I think the way it works... and a quick check with Filemon
seems to confirm it... the browser checks HOSTS. If the URL
is not there it calls the DNS server. Typically that would
be set in your network settings. So, for instance, say you
use OpenDNS for DNS. Your listing in Network should be
something like 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220. You then
change that to 127.0.0.1 when installing Acrylic and you
set 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220 in AcrylicConfiguration.ini.

The result is that when the browser calls DNS, the call
gets received by Acrylic -- it's a DNS proxy service -- which
then checks its HOSTS file and its own DNS cache (which
is configurable in terms of expiry time). If it doesn't find
the URL then it calls 208.67.222.222.

So both HOSTS files are used. It's extremely fast to check
a text file for a string, so it shouldn't be inefficient, but
with Acrylic you can afford to greatly shrink or remove
your existing HOSTS file, if you think it's worth the trouble.

The problem I find with those is that they include things
like www.alsrecordstore.de or www.doubleclick.kr. There
are hundreds of specific URLs I'll never visit.

Nevertheless, I have both HOSTS files with maybe 100-300
items and I still find most sites load virtually instantly. (Which
I credit to the fact that I block script routinely and also
block the vast majority of external linking via HOSTS. In
other words, the time needed to read 2 HOSTS is more
than made up for by not calling doubleclick, google fonts,
google tag manager, scorecardresearch, etc.)



Excellent explanation...!

Thanks for taking the time to clarify that.
--


Bob S.

Bob_S wrote:

This software has been mentioned in a number of posts so I decided to try
it. Installed on a Win7 test system and made the changes to 127.0.0.1 and
::1 for DNS servers.

My question is: Which HOSTS file is Acrylic using?

A search:

https://www.google.com/search?q=acry...20hosts%20file

found:

https://mayakron.altervista.org/wiki...d=AcrylicHosts

The article doesn't give the path to the file but you should be able to
search on "AcrylicHosts.txt" to find it.

"VanguardLH" wrote


| My question is: Which HOSTS file is Acrylic using?
|

| https://mayakron.altervista.org/wiki...d=AcrylicHosts
|
| The article doesn't give the path to the file but you should be able to
| search on "AcrylicHosts.txt" to find it.

It's in the program folder, but that wasn't
his question. He wanted to know how using
Acrylic would affect the role of HOSTS. I
think the issue has been settled.