AVIRA 8 Release Notes - Now released!

AVIRA ROCKS

 

Same here. And I don't use Threatfire and a router.

 

So far I have used Avira 8 Premium with Vista Firewall Control (free) and now I am running a trial of of the Suite. I have used the WebGuard with both setups and notice no slowdowns. The firewall in the Suite seems to cause a SLIGHT slowdown over the Vista firewall but it is barely noticeable. Great job Avira.

 

That is good to hear ffreedom. Avira has always strived to create first, compete second, and that attitude is what you want to see in a security vendor. There are others here that also hold this thought, but Avira really does care and if the cake aint perfect, then they are offended from the top on down. You will always get yours moneys worth from them in any product you buy.

 

Proxo may be good and useful, but in my experience it DOES slow down browsing, and sometimes quite a bit, so for me, the Avira web guard is the best choice as far as performance goes..

Also, here is a brief blurb on the Avira site relating to what you posted earlier on the speed tests and downloading in general:

http://www.avira.com/en/support/kbdetails.php?id=208

 

Proxo is one of those things that you wind up spending your whole life tweaking. I tried it a few times and gave up.

 

I don't tweak Proxo hardly at all. I let Sidki do that and before him JD5000 and before him Scott himself. I am very grateful to the folks who work so hard to provide users with outstanding config sets and currently the main ones are Sidki and Grypen and both configs are excellent and as soon as one is released work is begun on the next set. There are different levels to the config sets and I use the medium level and I do change a few things such as letting Proxo make all cookies Session only as I don't like that as I don't want to have to login here everytime I come here. Every now and again, I will add a filter set that I see from someone who has posted it but that takes very little time. Proxo would be very time consuming if I had to learn to write my own filters but luckily there are wonderful folks who care deeply about Proxo who give a lot of their time to write excellent config sets for us to use. But if Proxo slows you down then I can understand your not wanting to use but for that reason not because it requires tons of care and feeding.

As for Webguard, I cannot use anything that screws with my Speed tests. I guess you all have DSL connections? Those tend to be very steady. I have cable broadband and I need proof to get my ISP to fix problems as my connection sucks much of the time. It is all over the place and I need proof of that and proof of the times (pattern) when it is bad which means running my primary test every ten minutes most of the time. Look at this graph for the last 24 hours.

Besides, Fx, Opera and Safari are unable to load images if Webguard is used and IE cannot load images or text...it is totally broken by Webguard. So, why in the world would I consider using it? Proxo doesn't break image loading and IE also works fine with it.

 

I have cable here with 20+ Mbps speeds, virtually never a problem, so I don't have the need to test my speed like you apparently do Mele. A few years ago I did have some problems, but it turned out to be a dying modem. My ISP people came out, looked things over, gave me a new modem, and everything returned to normal. So perhaps that could be your problem, I don't know..

I'm not sure what happened to your Avira installation, but I have no problems here with the web guard using IE, either on Xp or Win2k. Right now I'm on Win2k. Everything loads fine on pages, no speed issues and so on.

One thing you might consider, since you're using Proxo, it's doing a proxy thing, just as the web guard does, so perhaps both together is a problem? Double proxying must slow things down for sure... or maybe even conflict somehow. I don't know...

But anyway, Avira does well on my current 2k installation, so I can't complain at all. Seems to be the best to me..

 

Ok, I'm back, not to jump back into the for Webguard/against Webguard argument, but hopefully to help. Melee, for sure having Webguard running and Prox together are very likely to slow things down, just in the way that they work. Your connection could be due to a LOT of things, not just an Http scanner. You could have a faulty modem, a faulty splitter (if one is used), hell, with cable it even depends on how many people in your area use cable internet and how many are on at one time.

Also, try resetting the router if you use one. As far as images and text on some websites, is it possible you may have either A: A faulty or overly strict filter in place, or, B: Filters that are conflicting with each other. Adding filters can be overdone.

 

I am using Proxomitron aswell. No problems because of Webguard with either IE7, Opera or Firefox. The firewall is a different tale, though.

 

I use Firefox 3 beta 5 and no problems there with Avira working. And the guard scans all pages. I do see pictures and everything else.

 

the same here.

 

I was having problems with webguard and I did as a beta tester with V8. That said, and I posted this at the Avira forum, I uninstalled the Security Suite, cleaned out the registry with CCleaner, and reinstalled the program. I also set Firefox's cache to zero (0).

Now, the webguard does not slow down web pages loading, images, etc. I am not sure if Avira changed some code, the Firefox cache setting made a difference, or it was a registry remnant issue or some combination. Whatever the case, Avira is running lighter on my machine than even Dr. Web or Eset. Big thumbs up.

 

Unfortunately, my connection (everyone's here is also like this) has always been like this for seven years now. I was party to a major complaint with the State of Hawaii regarding Oceanic Time Warner's false advertising years ago when they claimed we would get a certain speed and no one on this island got anywhere like it. There was a terrible bandwidth crunch for Hawaii at the time. That got fixed with 3 major new underwater cables to the Mainland and one to Japan. There is plenty of bandwith now but Oceanic cannot provide decent 5mbps down much less Road Runner Turbo at 8mbps down. It is a joke for most and is not worth the extra $10 a month. Oceanic announced 15mbps service down back in November but then could not provide it. They still cannot provide it. The only way to get them to listen and do anything is to keep extensive speed test records and I own Ping Plotter Pro since the time I got broadband. I was warned I would need Ping Plotter for evidence of the bad speeds, pings, routing by two friends who got Road Runner a year before when it was available on the other side of this island before it came here.

I do have a router (Linksy) and I cannot reset it as it runs beta firmware (old firmware as Linksy has not issued firmware for this router in years and never made any of the beta versions gold) that I can't find now and it has to run that firmware otherwise Ping Plotter cannot work correctly. Even when the author of Ping Plotter told Linksy they needed to make this beta firmware official they didn't bother.

This is not a router problem though nor a modem problem. The modem is only three years old ..a Surfboard 5100. I show excellent modem stats and Oceanic has been out many times to check wiring, drop to this condo building, etc. This is a network problem and always has been (although I have also had physical issues drastically affecting speed ...issues at the node, building amp, etc but those have been fixed and still the erratic speeds and horrible download speeds, always less than 1/2 my advertised speed, when I download programs, etc even from West Coast locations). The tech support manager for Oceanic cable readily admits it is network problem and just says be patient, we are working on it. He's been saying that for years. Road Runner was faster, more steady speed when everything from Hawaii went through ATDN. Now everything has been switched to Level3 or tbone and that is not nearly as good as ATDN routing. So, doing speed tests that my ISP respects is extremely important. MySpeed from Visualware is the test they bought for us about three years ago (actually on my recommendation partly as they had been considering Justin's dslr test too). It is used by Time Warner internally also on all Road Runner gateways throughout the nation. So, my ISP likes, understands and respects this particular test and understands the immense amount of information MySpeedAdvanced that I own provides. That is important.

I need to be able to run my ISP's test regularly as well as MySpeed Advanced that I own. I can't do either if I use Webguard. My ISP told me that I should get a "better" Antivirus program. In fact they said they were going to recommend that no one use Avira with Webguard activated as being able to do their speed test is essential when talking with tier 3 (local) tech support about connection problems which are very prevalent in Hawaii. They asked me why I wasn't using an American AV...ugh...and wanted to know why I didn't use CA EZ AntiVirus which is free for all Road Runner users throughout the USA. It's a terrible AV and Road Runner should offer users a better AV free.

 

I didn't know you used Proxo! Whose configs? Grypen or Sidki...or do you write your own?

I assumed using two proxies would slow me down further...something was...but then as I have just posted we here in Hawaii, especially on all islands other than Oahu, have serious problems with Time Warner Cable Road Runner ISP and do not get good speed. Some on Oahu get excellent speed but even there the vast majority have the same problems with poor speed that the neighbor island users have. DSL is not available in my area even though I live in the second largest city in Hawaii. Time Warner cable has a monoply for the entire state so there is no choice for me for broadband except Road Runner.

I have not been brave enough to try Avira Premium again (with or without Webguard) since the mess I had with the browsers not working...especially IE..but I have IE6 and maybe it has more problems with Webguard. I also had all restore points after allowing Avira to upgrade internally to ver 8 destroyed. I had 90 points...ALL no good. That was Avira's doing probably because I didn't enter System Volume Information into exclusions quickly enough. (The internal upgrade destroyed all my settings and I had to do all of them all over again). I had intended to go back to a restore point before Avira upgraded. Since I could not do that, I am afraid to try Avira Premium again. The free version works fine.

 

Oh Rly ? No Wai


Just because many are experiencing problems with webguard doesn't mean that some other suggestions I see being mentioned are a good alternative.

Best Reguards,
CB

"In fact they said they were going to recommend that no one use Avira with Webguard activated as being able to do their speed test is essential when talking with tier 3 (local) tech support about connection problems which are very prevalent in Hawaii. They asked me why I wasn't using an American AV...ugh...and wanted to know why I didn't use CA EZ AntiVirus which is free for all Road Runner users throughout the USA. It's a terrible AV and Road Runner should offer users a better AV free."

 

Lol, basically they just told Mele "You know what, unless you use software WE provide, screw you". I know all about monopoly, Insight, Comcast, whoever the hell they are now have a stranglehold on cable internet in Indiana. I have DSL available, if, as I'm told by AT&T, I wasn't too far away from their nearest hub or whatever. I DO get good speeds...when it's actually up and running.


Off topic but I checked out Prox last night. I've heard a lot about it but wouldn't know where to start with it or how to configure all those filters, lol. I'm gonna have to read up on that because I would love to have a good, free way of getting rid of all that crap in IE that I can with AdBlock Plus in FF.

 

Comcrap is just as bad, if not worse, than Time Warner. AT&T though isn't any better and they are probably going to be the first of the large ISPs in the USA to make a deal with Phorm or the likes. Comcrap though, at least cares about DOCSIS 3.0 and 50 to 100mbps speeds for home users and is rapidly preparing, at least in areas where there is competition from Verizon, etc., whereas, Time Warner has gone on official record just a week or so ago stating that they will not be upgrading speeds or preparing to launch DOCSIS 3.0 because they believe their customers don't care about speed! They actually said that! But AT&T is the one making the loudest noises regarding a deal with Phorm. Be very careful before you think of switching to them.

As for Proxo, you can read the Proxo help file first of all. It will have some confusing stuff but you will grasp the important parts right off the bat and then go to Castle cops and there are three forums there for Proxo. The general Proxo forum was originally hosted by Scott himself and is still active. Grypen's and Sidki's forums are hosted by each respectively and you can download their current configs by clicking on the links there which I think in Grypen's case, as well as Sidki's, takes you to their websites to the download page. Sidki has notes on his download page about how to install the configs (I know more about his because I use his configs). There are pros and cons to each set of configs so you may want to read some in the Castlecops Proxo forums before deciding which one to try first. You can try each but reading first might give you an idea of which you'd maybe like better.

You can ignore, for now, all the stuff in Scott's Proxo help file about writing your own filters. I still don't write any of my own. But if you want to learn to do that...well, that should be put off until you have used Proxo for awhile and understand better how it works. You can still use Scott's last configs which come as part of the download of Proxo. But you will see ads on quite a few sites because those configs are really old now.

There are different levels to the configs (Scott's has six) and Sidki's has 3...not sure for Grypen's. I would leave them on the default config which is "medium" level...like medium heuristics level in an AV. Sidki has some defaults for the display of Google search that I don't care for so I uncheck those but in the beginning just leave it as is. Plus, you might like his changes....lots of users do! Most of his other changes in cleaning up some popular sites I like.

I felt very intimidated when I first got Proxo and there is a learning curve but unless you want to write your own filters the curve is not that steep and you can ask questions in the three forums or here. I would leave HTTPS coverage alone for the time being. Scott was leary of Proxo doing it and recommended against users doing it. I have never installed the necessary files for Proxo to do HTTPS. It doesn't bother me if I see a few ads on my banking site. You may want to have Proxo filter HTTPS but again no need to make that decision right now. You will want to read up on the pros and cons of that and I'd say put that on the back burner for awhile and get used to Proxo filtering everything except HTTPS first.

 

Thanks Mele, I'll be looking into Prox tonight then.

 

And now, back to... "AVIRA 8 Release Notes - Now released!"

 

Lol, you just decided to write a "let's get back on topic" post that hasn't had any activity in close to 2 days? Now that's boredom.

 

Is this a bug? It's sure annoying.

 

I have the same problem.

 

It's not a bug, virus definition are old.

 

I do find it a bit stupid that Avira has put this thing into the info screen, while they are the ones not bringing out definition updates in the weekend...