Category Archives: Service Pack 1

Watchguard XTM Firewall and UTM Appliance – High CPU Usage in the GAV (gateway anti-virus) scand process causes lag and typing delay in Remote Desktop Sessions (RDP) and SIP or VoIP latency issues

Watchguard XTM Firewall and UTM Appliance – High CPU Usage in scand process causes lag and typing delay in Remote Desktop Sessions (RDP).  You may find that remote users report a lag with Remote Desktop Sessions, freezing sessions, black screen and random disconnections.  At around the same time users report these issues you may find that the CPU usage of the scand process on your Watchguard has increased to 100% and the majority of the activity is attributed to the scand process.  You may be able to recreate this issue by browsing websites that utilise lots of Adobe Flash or Media Content as GAV will need to scan all these elements of the web page.  Login to the Watchguard System Manager and then open Firebox System Manager click on Status Report and scroll down the report until you find the Process List (Screenshot Below).  This information will automatically update every 30 seconds so you can see the %CPU column will change and update every 30 seconds.  The top value system shows the overall CPU utilisation and if you look further down you can see which sub processes are actually occupying the CPU time and making up the overall system usage.  In the screenshot below we can see that system is showing 100 % CPU Usage and then further down we can see that the scand process is accounting for 90.99% of this.  When the CPU Usage reaches 100% on the Watchguard unit it may stop forwarding other traffic and this accounts for the lag and jitter we see within the Remote Desktop Session.  Other time sensitive traffic such as VoIP or SIP traffic may also be affected by this issue as the packets are delayed whilst the Firewall recovers from the resource exhaustion.  Users may also report that web pages are slow to load at the time these issues occur where the GAV process is still dealing with the other requests.

Resolution/Workaround:

You can try disabling the GAV (gateway antivirus) for the HTTP and FTP Proxy to ensure that this is the actual cause of your issues, if the problem subsides then you may need to consider updating the XTM OS to the latest release i.e. 11.5.2 and/or adjusting the GAV policy so that it does not scan some content i.e. Images/Text within websites.  You may also need to consider opening a support case with Watchguard to make them aware of this issue, if you have a large number of users then you may even need to consider upgrading your XTM appliance to a larger unit i.e. XTM 23 to XTM 505 or XTM 22 to XTM330 to provide additional processing power (CPU) and system resources to cope with the additional anti-virus scanning requirements.

Watchguard XTM High CPU Usage scand
Watchguard XTM High CPU Usage scand

[RESOLVED] Your computer may stop responding when you run an application, Software Firewall or anti-virus package that uses the Windows Filtering Platform API

Your computer may stop responding when you run an application, Software Firewall or anti-virus package that uses the Windows Filtering Platform API

This issue affects the following operating systems:

  • Windows 7 – Service Pack 1
  • Windows Small Business Server 2011 – Service Pack 1
  • Windows SBS 2011 – Service Pack 1
  • Windows Server 2008 R2 – Service Pack 1
  • Windows Small Business Server 2008 – Service Pack 2
  • Windows SBS 2008 – Service Pack 2
  • Windows Server 2008 – Service Pack 2
  • Windows Vista – Service Pack 2

In this situation, the computer may perform slowly or stop responding and network activity may be affected.  You find that a system restart may resolve this issue in some instances.

This issue occurs because the FwpsStreamInjectAsync0 function causes the interrupt request level (IRQL) to leak.  You can resolve the issue by updating to the latest Netio.sys driver.  The download link can be found within Microsoft KB 2664888 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2664888

 

Windows Filtering Platform (WFP) General Description

Windows Filtering Platform (WFP) is a set of API and system services that provide a platform for creating network filtering applications. The WFP API allows developers to write code that interacts with the packet processing that takes place at several layers in the networking stack of the operating system. Network data can be filtered and also modified before it reaches its destination.

By providing a simpler development platform, WFP is designed to replace  previous packet filtering technologies such as Transport Driver Interface (TDI)  filters, Network Driver Interface Specification (NDIS) filters, and Winsock Layered Service Providers (LSP). Starting in Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista, the firewall hook and the filter hook drivers  are not available; applications that were using these drivers should use WFP instead.

With the WFP API, developers can implement firewalls, intrusion detection systems, antivirus programs, network monitoring tools, and parental controls. WFP integrates with and provides support for firewall features such as authenticated communication and dynamic firewall configuration based on applications’ use of sockets API (application-based policy). WFP also provides infrastructure for  IPsec policy management, change notifications, network diagnostics, and stateful filtering.

More info can be found here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa366510(v=vs.85).aspx

 

HTTP and HTTPS requests or traffic to a Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, SBS 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 or SBS 2011 machine may exhibit increased latency if the connection is through a network load balancer

If you utilise Microsoft Internet Information Services IIS or an application that uses the System.Net.HttpListener class is installed or running on one the operating systems below, and you have a Network Load Balancer then you may find that Increased latency occurs on HTTP and HTTPS requests and traffic.

This issue occurs because the HTTP and HTTPS requests from clients can include zero length data in the SSL records, certain server-side variables do not update correctly in this instance and Http.sys leaves the connection in the CLOSE_WAIT state.  This intern exhausts the open connection limit can introduce latency, timeouts and connection problems.

Affected Operating Systems:

Microsoft Windows Vista

Microsoft Windows 7

Microsoft Windows Server 2008

Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 – SBS 2008

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2

Microsoft Small Business Server 2011 – SBS 2011

The Microsoft Knowledge Base Article KB 2634328 includes further information on this issue and provides an updated version of Http.sys that corrects the issue http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2634328

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 DNS Server may stop responding to DNS queries and requests from client computers

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 DNS Server may stop responding to DNS queries and requests from client computers, this issue may occur randomly and when it is occuring the DNS Server stops responding.

This issue occurs because the DNS Server goes into an infinite loop, more information about this issue and a hotfix to address the issue is provided in Microsoft KB 2655960 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2655960