Building a scalable platform for more than 100,000 requests a second

It’s hard to count on popularity. WebRep, the avast! browser plugin that gives users a reputation rating for visited websites, faced scalability issues soon after its launch in early 2011. The number of users shot past the original expectations and the incoming opinions were overwhelming the system.

We started WebRep with the ability to process 10,000 user responses a second, but the system was getting overwhelmed as the number of responses jumped to the 100,000 level. Read more…

You’ve been asking for it… so here it is: As of the latest update to our avast! 6.0 series (earlier this week), avast! WebRep is now available in the Google Chrome browser.

Screenshot of WebRep results, for the searched term "warez"

avast! WebRep is based on information received from the global avast! user community related to the content and security of visited websites. Read more…

avast! WebRep combines antivirus software with website ratings from millions of users in the global avast! community – providing users of avast! 6.0 with a community-sourced guide to the safety and/or content of websites. avast! users can thus know – before clicking a link – what to expect in terms of product or service quality, customer service levels, or website safety and reliability. Ratings results are “traffic-light” simple:  green = GO… orange = CAUTION… red = STOP!

But we’ve talked about that before. This time, let’s take a look at the website categories… Read more…

Recently we took pleasure in hosting journalists at our Prague HQ. Among them were Wojciech Kowasz and Jakub Pawlak from dobreprogramy, Poland‘s most popular download site. avast! Free Antivirus is Poland‘s top downloaded software, with over 14,000,000 downloads!

While visiting us in Prague, Mr. Kowasz and Mr. Pawlak recorded a video interview with our CTO, Ondřej Vlček.  Mr. Vlček introduced new features of avast! 6.0,  explaining how they differentiate avast! from other AV products. If you’ve ever wondered how the AutoSandbox works, what SafeZone is, or how can you rate a website using avast! WebRep, check it out. Mr. Kowasz and Mr. Pawlak also asked about everyday’s life in our HQ in Prague, how the virus lab works, and how we detect viruses. Read more…

I don’t know about you, but I really like taking the new avast! 6.0 features – WebRep, for example — for a test drive. With the beta 6.0 installed, I opened Google.com and quickly typed in “Longhotlegs” to see what would pop up. I even forgot to add the spaces. In my top five results, there was a stocking e-shop for women (no rating), strip bar in the UK (no rating), the TMZ celebrity blog (green rating), and – my favorite – a Wikipedia entry for Pholciadae.

This spider family includes the creature commonly known as “daddy long-legs”.

From the WebRep perspective, Google.com has a “good rating with many votes” while en.wikipedia.org has a “good rating with few voters”. Read more…