ADSL, DSL, Cable or any other connection like that, you should keep on PC ALWAYS CONNECTED TO INTERNET, or even if you uncheck both options, it will still do the job. Dial up is for dial up only…
I don’t know, I didn’t make that program, I just create skins for it… but, if you think logically, avast! will wait untill your internet connection is activated and then try to update itself (prgram updates as well as virus definition updates). If you keep everything on PC ALWAYS CONNECTED TO INTERNET, and you are still on dial-up, but let’s say this morning you didn’t want to connect to internet, you just turned your PC on to do some offline work… avast! will assume you are 24/7 connected to internet as you stated in those options (PC ALWAYS CONNECTED TO INTERNET) and it will try to autoupdate itself or definitions. You are not connected to internet, so autoupdate will fail, and you’d get error message that autoupdate failed for whatever reason… of course, it’s not whatever reason, you stated that you are ALWAYS CONNECTED TO INTERNET, and avast! trust you
To not make simple thing confusing… keep Dial Up option enabled if you are on Dial up.
No, I am on ADSL and my settings are set to PC ALWAYS CONNECTED TO INTERNET. I never had any problems.
Although I am behind hardware router/firewall, so I never have to dial to connect to internet. I am permanently connected 24/7
I know for some other people that are on DSL/ADSL, and they keep both options unchecked, and everything works fine.
We should wait for better explanation from one of Alwil programmers…
avast checks if there is an available connection each 40 seconds.
If there isn’t, wait more 40 seconds to check. Checking does not take more than one second and, of course, does not use the Internet band.
If there is a connection, check for an update. If there is not any new file to download, wait 4 hours to start checking again. If there is an available update, start it and install it. Again, wait 4 hours to check the next time.
Some of this settings could be configurated different, I posted the default values of the avast4.ini file (click on ‘Settings’ in my signature).