I checked out the new Web Shield provider and have some problems with it.
When I set IE or Firefox to directly surf the internet, everything is fine and Web Shield works as it should.
When I set IE or Firefox to use a proxy of my provider and tell Web Shield to listen to 80,8080 (8080 is the destination port to my providers-proxy) then only “easy pages” are being loaded.
First of all, what are you trying to accomplish? If it works fine after installation, why are you trying to change it (if it ain’t broke don’t fix it :))
Next, what OS are you using?
How did you customize the WebShield? I don’t understand why you changed the monitored port from 80 to 80,8080 - do you want to scan traffic that’s going out on port 8080?
I’m getting similar results.
Https sites do not load.
And windows messenger does not load.
So far this is only effected on the client computer on my home network.
I have yet to check out the host computer.
I am using the following.
WinXP Sp2, on both machines.
Ezproxy from Lavasoft, on the host machine.
I activated Web Shield and set it to show “Details” when scanning.
After I launched my Firefox, I discovered that nothing was actually being scanned. And this is quite logical, because I use the proxy of my provider and so Firefox does not go out to port 80, but to port 8080 of the proxy of my provider.
So I told Web Shield to look for redirected Ports 80,8080.
After launching firefox again with this new configuration, www.google.com launched fine and I also saw the scanning of this URL in the right hand corner correctly.
Then I launched news.google.com, but only the text came up, but not the images.
Then I disabled web shield and everything was fine again…
When I use Web Shield without to provider proxy, then also everything is fine. But I want to use the provider proxy… (for whatever reason…)
I am using Windows XP with Servicepack 2 and all security hotfixes.
The only thing I customized in WebShield is that I entered redirected ports 80,8080 so Web Pages from my providers-proxy are also scanned…
Will still do some tests, but for now this behavior is replayable and not random…
So in short for me:
Web Shield without proxies on in IE or Firefox: OK
Web Shield with proxies on in IE or Firefox: Not OK
(at least with the proxy of my provider…)
Does this help VLK? Please tell me if you need other data, or If I should test something else for you…
open the file \data\avast4.ini, and add the following to the [WebScanner] section
UpstreamProxyHost=address_of_your_proxy_server
UpstreamProxyPort=8080
in your browser, change the proxy settings to
server: localhost
port: 12080
Would that resolve the problem? BTW set this parameters for HTTP protocol only (no HTTPS or FTP)
frampo, what is ezproxy from Lavasoft? Does disabling it solve the problem (i.e. is this a conflict with ezproxy)?
But if you excluded this host, and all traffic is in fact routed thru this host (as it acts as a proxy) then WebShield can’t do its job can it? I mean, you’re practically excluding all hosts, not only 192.168.0.100, because all traffic is proxy’ed thru this host.
I tried your suggestion and this works indeed But as you said, its not working for SSL. So I point the http and ftp proxy to localhost:12080 and point https to the provider proxy. This config works ok…
VLK: Is this behaviour like it should be, or is it an issue to look at?
I also saw the problem I described when simply enabling Web Shield, but deselecting “Enable Web Scanning”. So nothing was actually scanned, but as I said before “complex” pages didn’t finish to load. Only disabling the web shield turned things to normal.
The only difference when using a proxy, is that the browser does not go out to port 80-Websites, but just to the provider-proxy to get the pages… So I’m still searching for a clue why Web Shield “shuts down the doors” when loading complex pages via the provider proxy…
I tried your suggestion and this works indeed But as you said, its not working for SSL. So I point the http and ftp proxy to localhost:12080 and point https to the provider proxy. This config works ok...
VLK: Is this behaviour like it should be, or is it an issue to look at?
Yes, this is exactly what I meant. FTP support is implemented but is still somewhat flakey - I mean, it was not really meant to be used at this stage (but you can try :)).
I also saw the problem I described when simply enabling Web Shield, but deselecting "Enable Web Scanning". So nothing was actually scanned, but as I said before "complex" pages didn't finish to load. Only disabling the web shield turned things to normal.
That makes sense - scanning was disabled but the transparent proxy was still in place.
The only difference when using a proxy, is that the browser does not go out to port 80-Websites, but just to the provider-proxy to get the pages...
This is not exactly true… If the browser knows that it’s using a proxy, it’s working a bit differently. But you’re right that it should theoretically work (but it is probably a problem of the upstream proxy that is not able to handle the requests as they’re coming from the WebShield)… We may investigate this further in our testlab during the next week.
VLK: I try to see if this also happens with other proxies and not only with my provider, but I have to search a bit to find a public proxy I can use to test things further.
Until you have sorted things out, I will use your workaround. And by the way: Web Shield scanning is too cool!
I tried a public proxy with the Web Shield turned on and this time all went fine.
But as one can imagine this public proxy was damn slow and not nearly as fast as the proxy from my provider. But at least all web pages loaded completely so far…
So maybe the problem is somehow speed related…
Well I don’t think so.
We’ve been stress-testing the WebShield proxy for months, and I can say it can very well handle loads MUCH MUCH higher than you’re probably having with your home connection.
It’s definitely something else - which is in fact proven by the fact that if you configure the things manually, everything works OK.
I’d wait for Lukor to come back from the mountains (he’s in GaPa :)) - on Tuesday. He’ll be probably able to tell us more (he’s the actual dev responsible for the WebShield, I’m just his (dumb) manager, y’know ;)).
Also having a problem with web shield on firefox,ie6 and yahoo browser where some sites will not load at all, e.g. PCPitstop, beta news etc mainly sites with lots of graphics, but some with lots of graphics eg sg1archive .com loads OK . Yet when I turn web shield off they all load fine and dandy. However when I go into customize and delete the redirected port the pages load OK. The question is do I need a port number in that section?
