Using DNS for ad blocking

instead of hosts file

[martin]

I have seen some collections of ad only hostnames put in a hosts file for use as ad blocking. There are really big ones available, but I was wondering if it isn't actually an overkill.

If one could get a DNS server that resolves everything that has ad, ads, banner, banners as part of a hostname it would kill lots of ads. The problem is I haven't really seen a DNS server supporting that. Any suggestions here?

I don't want to run a http proxy because you have to reconfigure browsers to support that.

[richlowe]

I've found that large hosts files tend to really confuse Windows XP. I mean the really large 100K plus files I've seen for ad blocking. When I tried it, I got unexpected severe slowdowns on accessing the internet, slow booting and other general hangs and things. It was a nightmare to figure out.

As far as using a DNS server, any old one (freeware) should do. You just define the hosts (probably by hand) that you want to block as going to 127.0.0.1 and set the DNS server to forward requests. Anything not in the database will resolved via forwarding.

[martin]

Actually wasn't looking for Windows software... I kinda thought that the forum name should speak for me but I'm looking for *nix DNS server preferably one which I can make master to all zones which include ads, etc. in the hostname resolved.

For example what I want to achive is resolve any of the following hostnames with my DNS server:

ads.example.com
foo.ads.example.com
bar.ads.example.net

with the following configuration in my DNS server

*.ads.*
ads.*

or something similar using regex.

I know that I can use BIND but I will have to enumerate all zones like:

ads.example.com
ads.example.net