Which would be better to block countries?

Server and resources being the main factor, which method would require less overhead for blocking complete countries, htaccess or iptables (or something cooler that I did not even know existed)?

 

Why would you want to block complete countries? Are you getting a lot of spam from certain countries and such or what? I believe .htaccess would be the best option though, but I'm not 100% sure. Perhaps @Brandon can answer this better

 

I found no reason to continue to let china onto my sites, whether it be for hack attempts or spamming.

 

Well, I did a google search and found this site http://www.countryipblocks.net/
Let me know if that helps?

 

That is where I got the IP's from but need to know which way to go for implementation, htaccess or iptables

 

I'd recommend doing it via .htaccess because I've never tried iptables.
Here's another site that helps you blocking china http://www.wizcrafts.net/chinese-blocklist.html

 

By the way, if any one is interested, iptables is definitely the way to go. .htaccess uses more resources for blocking than using iptables at the server level.

 

IP tables? What do you mean? I never heard anyone actually use that term before....

 

IPTables are part of the built in linux firewall. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iptables