About Network Shield

[TAP]

According to Network Shield's descriptions.

"A new resident protection module was added to avast! 4.5: the Network Shield. It is meant as a protection against known Internet worms/attacks. It analyses all network traffic and scans it for malicious contents. It can be also taken as a lightweight firewall (or more precisely, an IDS (Intrusion Detection System))."

Does this mean that Network Shield works similar to NOD32's IMON (HTTP, FTP scanner) or similar to gateway firewall-based antivirus ?

Sorry for dumb question.

Thanks

[Lars-Erik]

Aiii...  So on NT/2000/Xp systemes avast! now add TWO services that scan the data-stream to/from the net (new mail-scanner and network shield). And if one have a firwall too then there is THREE services scanning all traffic. Anyone tested how this will slow down the transfer rate?

[Eddy]

Not slowing down at all here.

[techie101]

Lars,

Look at it this way...
Even when users have a router firewall, and then incorporate a stand-alone firewall in the computer itself, the tranfer rate is virtually unaffected.

Does the transfer rate change?....certainly, but to the "human eye", un--noticeable.

Have fun.

[pk]

TAP: network shield NT driver loads itself after TcpIp driver, NOD uses user-mode scanning, so it's not very useful.

Lars: scanning is very fast, it uses the best scanning algorithm and there are not many signatures

[Vlk]

On anything of speed <= 100 mbps the performance penalty should be negligible (unless you have very old hardware).

On gigabit/10gigabit networks it may slowi things down considerably though- but who's using these speeds to access the Internet?


Cheers
Vlk

[lukor]

Just want to note, that Network Shield protects you from internet worms that spread themselves via various security holes in your system. Typicaly these kind of viruses don't infect files but instead  they attack running processes on your PC (either Windows components or some server programs like SQL Server, IIS etc.). These kind of attacks are not easily catched by ordinary antivirus during file or mail scanning.

So you can hardly view it as a duplicate work.  

Good night.
Lukas