Bittorrent and AV

Hi all,

My virus protection is about to expire and I am considering switching AV progams. I have narrowed my decision to either Bitdefender or Zonealarm, but heard that they both mess up bittorrent programs. Are these problems caused by the AV programs themselves or the firewalls that come bundled with them?

Thanks,

ybox

P.S. my first post!

 

bitdefender or zonealarm, is this your only choice?

if your talking of suites, go with bitdefender

im not sure if you can install without firewall or not (is there a custom install?)

but if not, you should still be able to disable the firewall, i doubt its the firewall blocking your torrents, try utorrent and make sure your port forwarding is done correctly if using a router.

 

I'm looking at stand alone AV's. I'm looking at bitdefender and zonealarm becuase they were the top two picks in the consumer reports test of stand alone AV's. Should I rely on consumer reports? NOD32 is interesting, but I can't find anything that compares it to other AV's.

ybox

 

have a look around,

try the trials, and see what is best for you, use this time as your other is running out, to try them all, and dont rush your decision.

Nod32 Trial
Dr.web Trial
Kaspersky Trial
F-secure Trial
Norton 2007 Trial
F-prot Trial
Avira Trial


if you care about the high detection rates and testing etc, try http://www.av-comparatives.org (read reports), also see the latest results by AV-TEST.org

have a go, and let us know how you get on

 

Dont trust consumer reports

 

Welcome to the forum ybox.

It depends on what sort of problem we are talking about, if it is connection problems it is most likely a not so good configured firewall. Different firewalls have different ways of how to configure them to let bittorrent traffic pass through.

I have used NOD32 in the past with various bittorrent software (uTorrent, Bitcomet, Bitspirit, Azureus) and had no problems. NOD32 doesnt interfere torrents in Vista either.

I use Drweb in my XP and have no problems with torrent software. Nowadays I only use uTorrent.

 

Just a word of caution. This may not apply to you, and might have been something to do with my machine or settings, but I couldn't get uTorrent or Azureus to work fully with Bit Defender Suites 9 or 10, but it DID work fine with Bit Comet. No matter what settings I used, I couldn't get the port to forward with the other two torrent clients, both of which worked fine with other security suites. That said, I raised this issue somewhere on here, and it seems some people haven't had any problems with torrents and Bit Defender, so it might be worth trialling it to see how it works on your system. Having been burnt before, I would never license a new security app, without at least a week's evaluation first.