OT : AdTrap

[Steve Walker]

Not strictly DIY*, but probably interesting to some.

- A little Arm7 box connected between router and wall-socket, blocking an updateable list of advertising traffic. $140 one-off cost, saving the hassle of installing per-device variants of AdBlock etc.

They've just started shipping, and the forums are full of talk about porting the software to old routers and raspberry pi's etc. Maybe possible to create a DD-WRT extension?

(*no role identified for angle-grinder, yet)

[Brian Gaff]

Some might suspect that the latest Virgin routers are probably best used to test angle grinders, as they are so buggy as routers, door stops are now the main use.

Brian

[Chris Hogg]

Does it trap spamming adverts in newsgroups?

[Huge]

I just run a Smoothwall with a *big* hosts file to alias out all the advertising sites. The software's free. The PC it runs on cost £10.

[Brian Gaff]

I'd doubt it as those are on all servers, web ads are inserted inline by other servers. I think if you use a client not Google you can trap most of them in any case. Brian

[Robin]

JOOI* what are the annual running costs?

*Since we retired PCs, routers etc account for a quite outrageous proportion of our electricity usage ;(

[John Williamson]

Alternatively, for no cost whatsoever, install AdBlock plus.

Installs as a browser add on for all commonly used browsers and Just Works (tm)

[Chris Hogg]

It was tongue in cheek, Brian. I was implying, not entirely seriously, that the OP was simply advertising AdTrap under the guise of a message, and therefore spamming.

[Andrew May]

Privoxy will run on OpenWRT, so can probably be installed on DD-WRT as well. And very effective it is too for blocking adverts on web pages on the iPad where Adblock et al won't run.

[Huge]

Excessive.

:o(

Since our leccy cracked £1K/yr, I've been mulling running it on cheaper hardware. The showstopper seems to be the need for 3 network interfaces.

[dennis]

If you are using old desktops then it can be cheaper to buy a new one and save the electricity costs.

Some of the old ones would cost several units a day more than the cheap atom based boxes and the atom would be faster.

[The Natural Philosopher]

yes and no.

An Atom isn't capable of running a modern desktop stuffed with eye candy especially well.

Its better to use a modern CPU/GPU with power reduction technology. The power is there when you need it, not when you don't.

Interesting aside, Moores law has apparently been breached. The end of the road for 'smaller faster' chips has arrived.

I've noticed that when looking for a new computer. I can get more cores, I can get less power, but MIPS per £ has stopped increasing. Today's $50 chip is really very little better than 2005's $50 chip.

[Robin]

Eek!

Mind you, judging by Radio 4's WATO today, the Beeb might be happy to present you as an example of the way the nasty energy comapnies are exploiting customers who are doing all they can to keep warm :)

IIRC it used to be possible to add 2 PCMCIA LAN cards to a suitable laptop. But I think the only ones I ever used were 10Mbs so possibly not what you want for Xmas.

[dennis]

That's because Intel stopped trying to have more MIPs per chip and went for more MIPs per watt. The requirements changed and we don't really need more MIPs to run the software, but we do want better battery life.

[polygonum]

Possible even a saving. In electricity - for no having to deal with untold megabytes of crap.

[Bernard Peek]

Update your hosts file and you get the same result for nothing. That sort of hardware might be justified for a multi-user network but not for a home user. But businesses would probably get the same result from a firewall or a spare PC loaded with a freeware firewall.

[dennis]

A RASPi with an additional USB ethernet would be cheap and low power. It could be running other things at the same time.

[fred]

In article , Bernard Peek writes

You'll end up with a 20k entry hosts file which I can't imagine is the most efficient way of doing things.

Agreed though that a third party hardware solution is a joke.

[Huge]

janus (root) ~ $ wc -l /etc/hosts

16613 /etc/hosts

Works just fine. I run dnsmasq on that box.

[Steve Walker]

Sure, and I use it on 4 windows pc's here. But to block the Android devices you need AdAway, and that can't be installed without root. And then there's the blackberries and ipads etc....

If this AdTrap thing can block the whole lot at network level, I'm tempted.