Avast Blocking bandwidth Speed

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Hello All, new to Avast and to this forum. Avast was recommended to me by an Hub site IT support for the company I work for. Before Avast I was using Computer Associated virus program. Here’s my problem, I have 4 PC’s wired through and Motorola Surfboard SB5100 modem, then to a Linksys WRT54G wireless router. All are hardwired to router under house. I recently upgraded to Insight’s 20.0 speed for my son and his Xbox to play on-line. Playing with some speedtest sights I found that 2 PC’s still on CA antivirus get an average of 18MB download speed. I figure this is correct because the distance of my cable line then through modem and router. The 2 using Avast get about 8 MB download. But If I disable Avast it jumps to 18 MB download. Is there some setting I am not aware of. Using XP Pro on both with 1 gig of ram and about the same 2.4 processors. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

2

welcome to the forum.

strange avast should not slow down your internet speed,in fact it shouldn’t do that at all.

what site did you visit to do this speed test or how did you do that?

what version of avast do you us version 4,5, free, pro, suite?

any others security programs installed like a third party firewall? like comodo, outpost?

3

I have this same issue on one of my PCs - posted about it about a year ago. Never figured it out. Just upgraded this PC to avast v5 and retested it and getting pretty much same results as it had with v4.8.

I didn’t notice the issue on my laptop (with 3gb RAM) but did with my older desktop PC with only 1gb. The desktop is a slower processor though too.

I think it may mostly have to do with the total RAM but there could be other factors involved. I notice web browsing seems slower with Avast’s engines enabled, but the level of impairment is hard to reliably pin down with measurement tools. That is, the tools show slowdown but don’t agree as to numbers, and even differ depending on what browser I use.

I have a 20down/5up Mb/s FIOS internet connection and on the desktop if testing I get these #'s like these:

all AVAST shields disabled

(1) with IE browser

with speakeasy.net tool
19.06 / 3.99
19.19 / 4.50
19.33 / 4.46

with speedtest.net tool
11.92 / 0.96
7.92 / 0.65
7.09 / 1.00

(2) with Firefox browser

with speakeasy.net tool
15.56 / 2.05
11.64 / 2.51
13.17 / 2.43

with speedtest.net tool
11.98 / 0.49
7.83 / 0.59
4.31 / 0.53

AVAST shields enabled (except for P2P and IM, which I don’t use)

  1. with IE browser

with speakeasy.net tool
6.48 / 3.51
7.47 / 3.99
6.42 / 4.27

with speedtest.net tool
2.13 / 0.86
2.01 / 0.59
3.17 / 0.59

(2) with Firefox browser

with speakeasy.net tool
13.91 / 2.14
8.72 / 1.82
21.32 / 2.06

with speedtest.net tool
3.96 / 0.64
3.07 / 0.54
9.70 / 0.36

It’s like Avast impacts the browsers differently, as well as the test sites. Also the gauges that the sites use are kind of like speedometers, a needle going up etc, and when Avast is on those gauges kind of stop and stutter instead of moving smoothly which they do if Avast is not running.

Again I don’t know what the explanation is but could be some kind of resource issue on this PC, swapping to disk, or something like that, when Avast is doing its thing. Or the processor can’t keep up.

I never noticed much diff on my newer PC (a laptop) and I am upgrading that to v5 next, and I will try some speed tests with that.

4

Laptop upgraded to v5 & as b4 I notice no bandwidth problems, either surfing or testing.

with avast OFF

(1) IE browser

speedtest.net
19.14 / 0.59
19.20 / 0.75
19.04 / 0.70

(2) speakez
19.19 / 3.10
19.23 / 3.22
19.20 / 2.90

with avast ON (all shields except p2p and IM)

(1) IE browser

speedtest.net
18.62 / 1.93
18.59 / 1.51
18.70 / 0.49

speakez
19.00 / 4.53
19.12 / 4.57
19.24 / 4.54

(2) firefox browser

speedtest.net

19.06 / 2.00
19.18 / 2.17
19.92 / 1.67

speakez
19.19 / 4.47
19.90 / 4.46
19.17 / 4.41

The impact on internet/network speed on my Desktop seems to me to be related to the horsepower of the machine (RAM, processor, etc). On a faster/newer/more RAM PC (the laptop) I don’t notice a degradation. The older desktop PC though is impacted quite a bit.