Is an internet connection slowed down by antivirus software?
Having an antivirus on your Windows computer is a must-have today. Whether it’s a third-party antivirus or the Defender included in Windows 10 and 11, these antiviruses allow us to use our computer with peace of mind. However, it’s a fact that using an antivirus slows down your computer. But does it also affect your internet connection?
Depending on the antivirus we use, the computer may slow down more or less. Antivirus programs like Defender, Norton, or McAfee slow down the time it takes for the computer to start up or the time it takes to open a program for the first time. In the case of Defender, the computer slows down less when starting up but slows down the computer more when opening programs compared to Norton or McAfee.
Fortunately, after opening any program for the first time, it will no longer be scanned every time we open it, as the antivirus will understand that it is a safe program. It also slows down simple things like decompressing files, as each part is scanned for malicious content. It is a small price to pay to be safe.
However, when using the Internet, the antivirus is also active, analyzing what we download from the Internet and the content of the web pages we visit. The fact that the antivirus is running slows down the loading time of the web pages a little, although it does not slow down the Internet as such. Fortunately, the pages load very quickly, and since 100% of the CPU is not used, there is room to analyze what the browser is loading without us hardly noticing.
When it comes to downloading, the antivirus is not limited to speed. However, we can notice how the file takes some time to be available after it has been downloaded, for example, if we download it using a browser. This is the moment when the entire file that has already been downloaded is analyzed, and there it is already determined whether it contains a virus or not.
The antivirus also updates its virus database daily, sometimes doing so several times each day. Fortunately, these databases take up a few megabytes at most, so we won’t notice any loss in connection speed either. In the past, with slower connections, this could be a problem, but now it doesn’t affect our internet speed.
Another problem we can find is that the antivirus uses a firewall and is activated with the operating system, which can slow down some connections and possibly increase latency a bit.
Therefore, the Internet connection does not slow down as such, but we can notice a slowdown when opening the file immediately after downloading it. In contrast, transferring a file on a local network or uploading it to the cloud will be slower, because the antivirus will consume the Internet to scan it in real time.