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Ad Blockers are among the most popular browser extensions around, but if you use several browsers on several PCs, keeping everything in sync and installing all those plugins is a pain. Especially we you could be blocking ads at a much lower level.
It's not hard to block ads long before they reach your browser, you just need to set up an IP blocking list (what you browser-based blocker is using as well) either on your PC or through your router.
This how to will give you basic overview of how to set up your own global ad-blocking system.
===On your PC or Mac===
The secret to blocking ads for any browser is to do the blocking at the OS level. This means altering a file known as the hosts file.
A hosts file contains mappings of IP addresses to host names. When your computer starts up it loads the hosts file into memory and checks with this file before sending requests on to a web server.
To create an ad blocker you simple need to add some rules to your hosts file.
On Windows the host file lives at: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC
On Mac OS X and Linux it's generally at: /etc/hosts
Open that file and then add the rules for sites you'd like to block.
Of course figuring out where ads are served from is cumbersome task, but fear not others have already done the hard work for you. One of our favorites is the [http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.txt MVPs.org hosts file], just copy the contents into your hosts file, save and enjoy your new ad-free web.
===Using a router===
An even more efficient way to block ads is at the router level. With an ad block script installed on your router none of connected computers will see any ads.
Unfortunately most routers don't contain tools to do this out of the box. However, open firmware tools like DD-WRT or Tomato make it pretty simple to set up a network-wide ad blocking system.
If you're using the Tomato firmware head over to the Tomato forum where users have already contributed their own scripts along with instructions on how to install them. Just download the scripts, copy them to your router and you're done.
For DD-WRT fans, check out this forum post which contains several scripts and links you can use with your DD-WRT firmware.
===Future Outlook===
Ad Blockers are a controversial topic -- users love them, but everyone used Ad Blockers many sites would be out of business in a hurry. We don't expect Ad Blockers to go away, but at some point sites may start blocking users with ad blockers (a few already do). As with any cat and mouse game ad servers will get more sophisticated and ad blockers will race to keep up.
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