Any One Have Any Ideas?

I asked this question below over at the ZoneAlarm forum several days ago. I guess no one had any answers. I thought I maybe some of the experts here might have some ideas. I'm just curious why a firewall would cause a discrepancy in a speed test result.



Can someone please explain to me why when I use ZA 5.0 and newer, and run tests for my connection speeds, the tests always show speeds slower than with any other firewall, including ZA 4.5.xxx. For example, with ZA 4.5, Outpost Pro, Sygate free, my tests results are in the 4100 kpbs range. With ZA 5.0-5.5, I even tried the new ZA 6 beta, it drops to around 2700 kpbs. I like ZA, but I'm not using it for that one reason. I like using the most up to date software.

A little history on what happened to me. I'm a Comcast cable customer. When they gave us a speed upgrade, I spent a week trying to figure out why I didn't get the speed upgrade. I contacted Comcast by phone and e-mail, and they kept telling me I had the new speeds. I was running ZA 5.5 at the time. I finally uninstalled it and got the correct results from the speed tests. I felt pretty stupid getting upset at Comcast.


Thank you.

 

You aren't the only one, I too have seen the occasional drops with not only ZA, but every firewall out there with the exception of CHX or a SPI router. There is no apparent outright speed drop as such but an overall mean loss of speed, when using CHX alone, my Net Meter does not show any dips, as soon as I add a firewall, then I see quite a few peaks and dips with consistency.

 

If an older version of ZA works better, then perhaps use it. I am using ZA Plus 4.0 right now and have no speed problems.

But for best results I would have to agree with Arup and choose CHX-I. It is the lightest in all respects...

 

Maybe I'll go back to using ZA 4.5. It was the last build that didn't affect my speeds. As long as the firewall works, I guess it's ok.

Thank you.

 

One issue to check is CPU usage - firewalls have to process every network packet so high speed connections require more CPU. If CPU becomes a limiting factor (i.e. it hits 100%), then this can limit network speeds.

If this is the case here, check your anti-virus background scanner settings - specifically ensure that the firewall log file (ZALog.txt in this case) is exempted from such scans. This file will be written to frequently, triggering multiple scans if it is not excluded (since the file is a text file, it cannot be used to contain a virus anyway) but the work involved may well be reported by Windows' Task Manager is being due to ZoneAlarm.

 

I tried installing ZA 5.5 after uninstalling my AV. There was no difference.

Normal everyday use with ZA 5.0 and newer is fine as far as I can tell. Connections from site to site are fast. It's just the speed tests that are affected by ZA 5.0 and newer.

 

Did you check ZoneAlarm's CPU utilisation first? Uninstalling your AV software was unnecessary - just disabling the background scanning would have sufficed.

However if it is only the speed tests that are reporting lower results and normal network traffic is OK then there likely isn't any need to worry.