Just got Verizon 1Gbps Fios on April 12.
After initial wonderful results on
www.speedtest.net (regularly 2ms ping, 900± down and 920± up), I noticed that download speed was sometimes much lower - between 400 and 550 Mbps, which is half of what is expected. Upload speed stayed high.
Now I know it's Avast. When download speed was lower the other day, Verizon's own speed test said that the router's speed was good in the 900s but my "device" had an issue. (The "device" is my Win 7 Pro 64-bit PC, on which I'm typing now.)
That was a surprise, and then I remembered that Avast had been the culprit a few times in the past when things went funny.
Sure enough! When I temporarily disable Avast's shields, the download speed goes right back up to 800-900 Mbps. When I re-enable the shields, the download speed is cut in half. I also see in Task Manager that AvastSvc.exe *32 goes like crazy and uses up close to 100% of the CPU during the download.
Now, this is not the end of the world, since even 400 Mpbs download is 50 times faster than my old DSL, but it is
ANNOYING.
Hey, Avast, what's the problem? Can't keep up with the world? Please fix.
Thanks.