Firewall Causes Problems for A1 Website Search Engine

Most firewall software programs default to silently block all internet enabled applications unless explicitly specified otherwise in configuration:

• If you get flaky results, odd errors and similar, net traffic filtering software can be the reason.
• If you get no URLs found in website crawl and related tools, firewall software is often the reason.
• If you get warnings while crawling a website with links to dubious resources, internet security software can be the reason.

One hint of firewall or internet security software being the cause is if you have response codes like these listed in the website scan results:

• 500 : Internal Server Error
• 503 : Service Temporarily Unavailable
• -4 : CommError

Note: Another possible reason for the above problems can be modules installed on the webserver or website that blocks unknown crawlers.

Antivirus and other internet security solutions can sometimes cause problems when you are trying to download, install and run our software.

This usually only happens if we have just released a new version of A1 Website Search Engine and the download is thus considered rarely encountered.

If that happens the installation and the following launch may appear erratic, partially blocked and give error messages. In such cases check your antivirus log.

AVG CyberCapture : Rare File:
There are two possible solutions:

1. Submit the file to AVG and wait.
2. Turn off file execution scan while installing.

NOD32 client version 3:

• View advanced mode
• Select Setup
• Click - Antivirus and antispyware
• In Web access protection click Configure
• Expand HTTP and click Web browsers
• NOD32 will automatically consider" A1 Website Search Engine as web browser" (checked) - you must uncheck it for A1 Website Search Engine to work.

Norton 360:

• Whitelist / add the program A1 Website Search Engine in Program Rules

ESET Smart Security:
Solution:

• Set it to learning mode.

Bitdefender:
Solution:

• Take note if the websites you crawl contain links to or uses resources from unsafe websites.

Kaspersky anti-virus:
Symptoms:

• URL timeouts with Indy HTTP engine.
• URL 404 response codes with WinInet HTTP engine

Solution:

• Pause it

Other software and hardware firewall solutions:
Symptoms:

• Various errors and/or no crawling

Solution: Mimic user browser behavior (like some other programs also do):

• In Scan website | Crawler engine to HTTP using WinInet engine and settings (Internet Explorer)
• In General Options and tools | Internet Crawler to Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Win32)
• In Scan website | Crawler engine lower amount of simultaneous conections, possibly all down to one.
• In Scan website | Crawler engine increase the amount of time between active connections.