I have been a used of AVAST for about a year and I’ve very please with the protection and performance. I recently changed the speed of my broadband connection to 15MB and noticed that 2 of my computers were running at about the 15MB speed and a thrid desktop was running at 3MB :-[. I changed the NIC card, cleaned the registry and finally called my ISP (knowing that it was computer related and they probably wouldn’t be able to help. But indeed they pointed me to AVAST providers and suggested that I tune them. I turned off the IM and e-mail providers as this machine does neither. I still got the same results 3MB downloads. Then I selectively turned off the other providers and found that when I turn off the WebShield provider my download speed goes to 15MB+ :). I read through a number of threads and tried the Norton Removal tool (twice) and verified that there are no Norton Services running. I also got the Tweak TCP tool and ran it with the optimized settings. So my questions:
Do I really need WebShield?
If so how can I improve it’s performance - a 75% reduction is not acceptable?
Machine is running Windows XP SP3, 1GB RAM, on-board 100MB NIC/LAN
ISP connection is cable broadband - 15MB
AVAST 4.8 (I do not know the build)
Short answer is Yes, you do need the Web Shield if you want proactive defence, e.g. intercept malware before it gets on your system.
This isn’t normal for the web shield and there is no appreciable difference on my system (puny dial-up) or others with fast broadband as is seen with your other two systems…
So now we come to the hard part what are the differences in the other two systems from the one experiencing the problem ?
You can right click the avast ‘a’ icon, select about avast which will show the full build number.
WinXP SP3
avast home 4.8.1229
Dual processors (2x3GHz) 2GB memory and on board 100MB NIC (on LAN behind a Linksys router)
ISP connection is Comcast cable 16Mbps
I just downloaded a 1GB file via http with and without the Webshield active.
My ISP provides a “speedboost” for the first 30 seconds of the download which runs up to about 30Mbps and then settles back to a steady 16Mbps.
As David has noted for the experience of others here - with or without the Webshield active makes no measurable difference to the speed at which I receive the download.
From the original post it was not entirely clear if avast Webshield is active on the two systems that are not experiencing download degradation. Is it?
Just out of interest have you compared the RWIN setting between the 3 systems?
From the original post it was not entirely clear if avast Webshield is active on the two systems that are not experiencing download degradation. Is it?
WebShield is active on the 2 computers that are not experiencing performance issues
Just out of interest have you compared the RWIN setting between the 3 systems?
I used TCP Optimizer on all 3 systems to insure that the settings on all 3 are the same. TCP Rrecieve Window = 1,027,840
Can anyone help with this problem? I’ve been running with Web Shield turned off and have consistent 15MB download speeds. Suggestions from programmers?