Component Firewall

AVG Anti virus hmtoggle arrow1 Firewall What is a firewall, anyway?

A firewall is a device (either software or hardware) designed to monitor network traffic. It controls all communication between the computer and outer environment, allowing safe and blocking forbidden communication attempts, based on its defined policy rules. A correctly configured firewall will protect you especially against hacker attacks from the Internet.

 

Basic principles of AVG Firewall

In AVG, the Firewall component controls all traffic on every network port of your computer. Based on the current Firewall Profile, the Firewall automatically evaluates applications that are either running on your computer, and want to connect to the Internet/local network, or applications that approach your computer from outside trying to connect to your PC. For each of these applications the Firewall then either allows or forbids the communication.

By default, if the application is unknown (i.e. has no defined Firewall rules), the Firewall will first look into a Trusted Database of well-known, safe applications, and if it finds the application there, it will create a rule to allow the communication. If the application is not on the safe list, nor can be identified by real-time behaviour analysis, then you will be asked to allow or block the communication attempt.

 

Settings

The Firewall component overview in the Main Screen shows Firewall statistics, and enables you to adjust basic settings. More options are then available in the Advanced settings dialog.

 

The Select Firewall profile drop-down menu lists all currently defined profiles. You can conveniently switch to another profile here and confirm by pressing Save changes. If there are only two system profiles (Allow all, Block all) available, we recommend that you Regenerate configuration by pressing the respective button

 

By selecting Firewall enabled or Firewall disabled, you can turn the whole Firewall component on or off.

Emergency mode is a quick option for blocking all network traffic so that your computer is inaccessible to/from outside networks.

 

Check the Enable gaming mode box to ensure that when running fullscreen applications (games, PowerPoint presentations etc.), the Firewall will not display dialogs asking you whether you want to allow or block communication for unknown applications. In case an unknown application tries to communicate over the network at that time, the Firewall will allow or block the attempt automatically (according to settings in the current profile, see Firewall settings -> Profiles -> select the respective profile).

 

The Regenerate configuration button enables you to quickly update your overall Firewall settings.

Firewall