Protowall

[Bostonmess]

I don't know what it does, but it goes like fuck :D

Protowall (http://bluetack.co.uk/pw.html)

From Blutack (http://bluetack.co.uk/index.php)



Why does ProtoWall Standout above the rest?

External Firewall blockers are complete resource hogs and have a tendecy
to crash your system,but with Protowall it is Xp Driver Based, which means
it blocks packets at system level which is extremely fast. Protowall uses
less than 1% cpu usage, even under heavy upload/downloading and much more
accurate in packet blocking.

[jambo]

Protowall is similar to Peerguardian.

[tikdoph]

Nine out of ten dentists agree that the only way they could make it faster was if they painted it red.

[Bostonmess]

Originally posted by jambo
Protowall is similar to Peerguardian.

Or a hosts file?

[jambo]

Originally posted by Bostonmess
Or a hosts file?

A hosts file? Please elaborate.

[tikdoph]

Originally posted by Bostonmess
Or a hosts file?
Basically, yeah... although a fat lot of good it'll do against other P2P users who have downloaded suspect files from the likes of the RIAA, and are now sharing them with everyone else.

[Bostonmess]

Originally posted by jambo
A hosts file? Please elaborate.

A hosts file is a little text file with a load of IPs you paste in that you want your Pc to ignore. So if you get loads of shit form a certain Ip, the computer returns your address as an empty part of the internet (that's the explanation I read). It seems very basic. Search your Pc for Hosts (I think other applications have them too. It's in my System32/drivers folder.

Then do a search on the net for host files, find one you want to try, copy/paste it into the hosts file in the sytem32/drivers folder.

Tikdoph, what's that about suspect files, is it like a suspect package? it's not gonna blow me up I hope :D

I don't see how you can really d/l them, cos once you've got 'em if it's not what you want, you delete it = low/no sources?

[tikdoph]

Originally posted by Bostonmess
Tikdoph, what's that about suspect files, is it like a suspect package? it's not gonna blow me up I hope :D

I don't see how you can really d/l them, cos once you've got 'em if it's not what you want, you delete it = low/no sources?
You'd think so, but I guess there are alot of morons out there who just leave all kinds of shit on their computers.

The kind of suspect files I'm talking about are files that might appear to be, for example, "Madonna - Music.mp3" ... you download it and it consists of nothing more than Madonna saying something like "Don't pirate music. You suck.", etc... followed by 4 mins worth of static. The idea is that the RIAA wanted to make downloading music more trouble than it was worth, so they started seeding the P2P networks with what essentially amounted to bogus files in the hope that people would get so sick of downloading shit that wasn't what they wanted, that they'd just go out and buy their music from the record store like good little consumeristic automotons.

They basically gave up on it because it did SFA to help their cause.

So you can start breathing again. :)

[Bostonmess]

Heh, I remember that Madonna one "Why are you fucking doing this?" I think it supposedly said, and then someone defaced her website with the words "This is why I'm fucking doing it" :D

Yeah, you're probably best off getting your stuff from reputable websites like Shareconnecter etc these days, although I think they're closing 'em down, Sharereactor/Filenexus RIP :(. There still seems to be others though. I was reading a thread about, if the website itself was hosted on the network/your Pcs along with the files. Seems a good idea (although I don't know shit about such things) people were saying it would take ages to update, and you'd have to queue to access it. Doesn't really make sense to me as: why would you queue to access something on your own Pc? Each time something is updated, it just gets added, you don't have to rewrite the whole site, or would you?

[davery]

Seem to be a few crossed wires here... Peruse the following from the comments at the top of my hosts file (found in "\WINNT\sytem32\drivers\etc") :

# Copyright (c) 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

127.0.0.1 localhost


What the hosts file does is allow your computer to bypass the dnslookup when attempting to resolve IP addresses.

So for example, you can make up a bogus url and map it to a particular IP - ie. if you want to call your computer (or another one on the net) something wierd like "borked", you could enter "127.0.0.1 borked" and whenever you attempted to access "borked", it would access your local box...

Can be helpful when your DNS servers go down (as they used to all the time for Telstra a year or so ago), as you can map regularly accessed sites (for example "209.213.197.228 www.zgeek.com").

I have no idea where you came up with the above concept of ignoring certain sites... :confused:

[Bostonmess]

Originally posted by davery
I have no idea where you came up with the above concept of ignoring certain sites... :confused:

Neither have I, it was a long time ago and I was very drunk at the time :D

No, probably from that source of all bollox: the P2P forums :D

Hang on found this, I probably just took the bit of info I wanted (as usual) :)

http://win98private.net/hosts_file.htm

I use it to filter out the various banner ads, like doubleclick.com, by assigning their address to DNS "1.0.0.0". A snippet from my Hosts file:

1.0.0.0 a32.g.a.yimg.com
1.0.0.0 ad-adex3.flycast.com
1.0.0.0 ad.adsmart.net
1.0.0.0 ad.ca.doubleclick.net
1.0.0.0 ad.de.doubleclick.net

So, where those ads are supposed to be I just get a blank with the "alt" description, if any, and the "page not found" if the space is large enough to show it. Since the browser does not have to fetch and load all those images, usually animated, browsing is faster.

[tikdoph]

Originally posted by davery
I have no idea where you came up with the above concept of ignoring certain sites... :confused:
It's pretty simple, as Bostonmess explained.

Programs like Kazaa, that have ads popping up within a section of the client window, can have the address of the offending ad server loaded into the hosts file and it will prevent any ads, pages, etc served from that site from appearing.

My hosts file is 62kb in size, which basically means that I have a shitload of sites blocked from sending ads to me. There are undoubtedly even larger, more extensive host files out there on the net that would block even more sites.

[davery]

Yup that's another great use for the hosts file - mapping unwanted URLs to bogus IPs ! :D

I can see where the confusion arose now... ;)

edit: tikdoph, you are not actually "blocking" anything from coming in, you are preventing the local application (Kazaa or whatever) from requesting stuff from the particular servers it is trying to access (by short-circuiting where it is trying to connect to).

The net result is the same - you don't get the ads, it's just not working the way I think you are explaining it.

Firewalls work differently to what we are discussing, they actively prevent external computers from connecting in and/or out via certain ports (if configured correctly).

Trust me on this one (even though you don't know me from a bar of soap) - if you put a computer's address in your hosts file, it will not make your computer invisible to that IP adress.

If you provide a dummy IP address (192.x.x.x, 10.x.x.x, or whatever) for a valid URL, however, it will stop your computer connecting to that site (from your end), you'll just get a "server not found" error (or some such).

[Bostonmess]

Hey Davery, what do I type in my hosts file for Zgeek/other sites if I want it to do the bypassing stuff (not blocking, obviously I still want access), do I just put the IP in or do I need something else too?

Edit: 209.213.197.228 Zgeek.com (then my IP?)

[davery]

Easiest way to do it, Bostonmess, is to bring up a Command Prompt (DOS window, whatever you want to call it), and type "ping www.zgeek.com" (or whichever site you want to map).

You will get something like:
Pinging www.zgeek.com (209.213.197.228) with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 209.213.197.228: bytes=32 time=180ms TTL=49
Reply from 209.213.197.228: bytes=32 time=170ms TTL=49
Reply from 209.213.197.228: bytes=32 time=170ms TTL=49
Reply from 209.213.197.228: bytes=32 time=170ms TTL=49

Ping statistics for 209.213.197.228:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 170ms, Maximum = 180ms, Average = 172ms

Note the IP address (bolded above), and enter a line like the following into your hosts file:

209.213.197.228 www.zgeek.com

Repeat for all the sites you wish to map...

Now note that this should not be neccessary, it's very rare for the DNS servers to go offline (unless your ISP is a piece of shit, or a concerted effort is made by hackers to knock out the DNS lookup network) and it can cause problems down the track. For example if www.zgeek.com was to change IP addresses, your PC would keep looking for it at the old address, despite the fact that the DNS servers have been updated to the new address. So keep that in mind - in most cases there is no real benefit to editing your hosts file, unless you really have to (for whatever reason).

If you want to experiment, try putting:
127.0.0.1 www.zgeek.com
in your hosts file, and then try getting to this site. Remember to remove the entry after your experiment ! ;)

Also note that the hosts file is not read every time you try to resolve an address - you may need to log off/on, or reboot your PC for the changes to be picked up.

Disclaimer: Take everything I say with a grain of salt - I am not a network specialist; I know what I know from years of working as a computer programmer and systems support, but I am not always 100% correct (who is?). As far as I know, the above is the way it all works, but I defer to anybody with more knowledge of the matter than myself.

[Bostonmess]

Heh I know the 127 etc trick, my hosts full of 'em. I'm gonna type the Zgeek one in and see if it's any faster. Cheers.

[wolfpac181]

heh......

never can be to safe:)

me:
dual firewall with reject list on primary.
run peergaurdian.
run multiproxy with P2P routed through 1200 anonproxies .
and I wear a helmet.

[Spingo]

BTW, I should mention that ZGeek's IP will be changing in a few days due to a server upgrade.. ;)

[Maestro]

Originally posted by wolfpac181
.
run multiproxy with P2P routed through 1200 anonproxies .Am I reading that right? Are you routing through twelve hundred proxies? Surely that's unworkably slow...? What happens when one of them doesn't respond?

[wolfpac181]

Originally posted by Maestro
Am I reading that right? Are you routing through twelve hundred proxies? Surely that's unworkably slow...? What happens when one of them doesn't respond?

It just goes to the next one in the list...... it's a bitch to keep updated.

you'd think it's slow, but actually it's quite quick; let it test all 1200 at initation of Multiproxy (take about 5-10 min). I've maxed my total 768K DL cause of multiple proxies obtaining info for me.

Only thing I don't like using it for is whit IE, tends to be a little nasty for the websurfing, But great for P2P, and brute force:)