The hosts file is most
likely a remnant from Windows' old TCP/IP-stack which originally came from unix (BSD?). (It is released under a more forgiving license than GPL)
You can find the same file in all linux and unix systems (desktop systems, at least). (in /etc/hosts or /etc/network/hosts or something similar)
It works like this:
|
Code:
|
####hosts example####
62.232.18.101 www.microsoft.com
81.105.32.2 www.google.com
####hosts example end#### |
if you type in "www.microsoft.com" (without the quotes) in a browser/ftp program/whatever it doesn't try to see where that address leads (it doesn't talk to your name server). Instead it resolves the address to "62.232.18.101" just by looking at the hosts file and tries to connect to that IP-address.
The hosts file is kind of like a local map of the internet.
What SpyBot does is change addresses to banner companies of little or no interest (sites containing spy cookies, for instance) to 127.0.0.1, whose name actually is "localhost" and points to your own computer, by adding them to the hosts file, so the browser doesn't try to load those sites from the internet.
It's a pretty nifty idea but I can imagine that it slows browsing down in some circumstances
(like when a browser tries to connect to the banner site repeatedly and doesn't load the rest of the page while trying and your firewall just drops the packets (not bugs. FEATURES.
It's most likely possible to change some settings in FF by going to about
:config to make the page render instantly and skip the waiting part at the cost of seeing pictures load after the html page is loaded)).
That noscript thingy can be tested manually by turning off javascript in your browser (which is good thinking security-wise, but kind of make some sites hard/impossible to navigate).
Turning off javascript will absolutely speed up browsing of websites with lots of advertisements, though (I believe that's what noscript do, but I haven't got time for google).
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