Smoothwall Slowness

[malware]

Hi all,

 

Just checking if anyone is in the same boat as us, for the past couple months we've had a few reports of websites not loading for a couple mins on first boot but after it has loaded everything is fine.

I think I have pinpointed the issue to being the smoothwall cloud filter extension not being able to communicate with the unified client and causing it to hang.

 

If I bypass the extension everything loads fine, is anyone else experiencing this? I'm waiting on Smoothwall getting back to me.

 

Thanks!

[Joeloman]

I doubt it's Smoothwall, but we'll see what support finds.

 

It would be good if you could tell us a little more about your setup.
Which operating system and browser are you using?
What are your hardware resources?
Are you also using Smoothwall as a Firewall?

How is your DNS set up? Have you tried changing it?

Very often the problem is a slow Internal DNS that is also used for external traffic or you use your ISP DNS which can sometimes be very slow.

 

If you have slightly older or less powerful computers try disabling TLS 1.3 Early Data in the browser, it never hurts to test. chrome://flags or edge://flags

[tom_newton]

Sometimes the extension can take a few seconds to start - particularly if it's been a while, or the user has cleared their profile, as you will need to download a new rules list (~35Mb) rather than an update.

Certainly if the agent couldnt communicate with the agent, it would also cause issues - that's an interesting bit of troubleshooting. DM me your ticket and I will make sure it's looked into

[malware]

3 hours ago, tom_newton said:

Sometimes the extension can take a few seconds to start - particularly if it's been a while, or the user has cleared their profile, as you will need to download a new rules list (~35Mb) rather than an update.

Certainly if the agent couldnt communicate with the agent, it would also cause issues - that's an interesting bit of troubleshooting. DM me your ticket and I will make sure it's looked into

Hi Tom,

 

Thanks for your quick reply.  

 

In the Edge logs it shows that the extension I presume is trying to talk to the unified client, it tries for around 112 seconds before throwing ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED and then the sites load.

{

  "params": {

    "initiator": "chrome-extension://dlcaglefdlidioooijnigjhfcndlncfp",

    "method": "POST",

    "url": "http://127.0.0.1:5769/companion.CompanionApi/RegisterCompanion"

  },

  "time": "240250",

  "type": 134

}

I will DM you the ticket number.

[tom_newton]

Any antivirus or anything running that might have decided this looks like malware?

[Joeloman]

Could there be a mistake in this KB regarding Edge and
Force Windows executable Native Messaging hosts to launch directly, as it does not mention Edge.
https://kb.smoothwall.com/hc/en-us/articles/20641568699804-Chrome-and-Edge-browser-configurations-for-Cloud-Filter-Extension

 

The same setting is available for Edge:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-policies/nativehostsexecutableslaunchdirectly

[malware]

1 hour ago, tom_newton said:

Any antivirus or anything running that might have decided this looks like malware?

We use Sophos but have not had any detections for Smoothwall and all Smoothwall paths are whitelisted, and thinking about it in my testing I completely removed Sophos and it didn't make a difference.

46 minutes ago, Joeloman said:

Could there be a mistake in this KB regarding Edge and
Force Windows executable Native Messaging hosts to launch directly, as it does not mention Edge.
https://kb.smoothwall.com/hc/en-us/articles/20641568699804-Chrome-and-Edge-browser-configurations-for-Cloud-Filter-Extension

 

The same setting is available for Edge:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-policies/nativehostsexecutableslaunchdirectly

Interesting find, I don't have the Edge log files near me to review at the moment but this definitely could cause it.

[Gongalong]

We had it happen, particularly with low powered laptops to the point where they were unusable for web browsing. Seems better on medium specced laptops, although I didn't research it much. Interested to hear if you find a solution.