When I installed Avast on the Macbook as part of the requirement to have an antivirus product for college, everything went well. When their system went into "enforcement" (the network checks for outdated Java and Flash, and that antivirus is up-to-date and the operating system is updated) I was blocked because the Avast wasn't updating. I tried to get it to manually update but the error details showed html code, stating that ResNet couldn't detect the browser I was using and to switch to another known browser.
What could be causing this? I've spoken with the people who manage the network for the college and this is something new that just started earlier this year. Before, they said, there were no problem updating Avast. I've submitted a packet capture from Wireshark to them, and they've tested my computer. They also have an iMac and several Mac minis that they've been testing and some of their test machines are have the same problem. They said that not all Macs appear to have this issue but they haven't been able to find a commonality between the ones that do, but the issue has become more prevalent.
Does anyone have any thoughts why an enterprise firewall would think that Avast's update request were actually a browser request? I know it goes out on port 80, but that's not only for the browsers to use.
