AllegroSurf® Release Notes

Check here to read a detailed list of what's new for each recent AllegroSurf release.

AllegroSurf Version 7.0.0.6

AllegroSurf 7.0.0.6 was released November 1, 2005.

Changes:

• Increased the winsock receive buffer size from 8192 (the default) to a larger size of 100KB, making transfers more efficient on higher bandwidth connections.
• Updated to zLib 1.2.3 from 1.2.2
• Updated OpenSSL libraries from 0.9.7g to 0.9.7h.

Bug Fixes:

• Corrected a problem when using SSL, where the connection can hang when transferring larger amounts of data rapidly. This affects the TCP Mapping proxies using SSL only.

AllegroSurf Version 7.0.0.5

AllegroSurf 7.0.0.5 was released June 30, 2005.

Bug Fixes:

• Corrected a bug where if an archive file exists, but is smaller than 100 bytes, any changes to that file may not have been written to disk.
• Changed the installer to remove unused files from previous installations, such as the Network Monitor, which is now a separate FREE product and download.

AllegroSurf Version 7.0.0.4

AllegroSurf 7.0.0.4 was released May 9, 2005.

Bug Fixes:

• Corrected a problem with the WWW proxy server where some web servers would not ignore HTTP 1.1 parameters when using HTTP 1.0. When posts are sent, AllegroSurf converts the request to HTTP 1.0, and now removes these extra HTTP parameters.

AllegroSurf Version 7.0.0.3

AllegroSurf 7.0.0.3 was released April 29, 2005.

Changes:

• Updated OpenSSL libraries from 0.9.7e to 0.9.7g.
• Improved content filtering to reduce the number of false banned sites.
• Improved sex word list to block more sexually related material.
• Improved site list checking.

Bug Fixes:

• Corrected a bug where the SOCKS BIND function could fail, if trying to receive data. WSAAsyncSelect() was not being called after the accept() call.
• Corrected a bug where AllegroSurf would not log WWW Proxy details.

AllegroSurf Version 7.0.0.2

AllegroSurf 7.0.0.2 was released March 22, 2005.

Changes:

• Changed licensing to the original format where AllegroSurf uses the number of concurrent users instead of the number of IP addresses.
• Updated OpenSSL libraries from 0.9.7d to 0.9.7e.

Bug Fixes:

• Corrected a bug where SOCKS BIND commands may return the incorrect external IP address depending on the server's IP address configuration. This is a long standing error.
• Corrected a bug where domain name resolution could cause a GPF.

AllegroSurf Version 7.0.0.1

AllegroSurf 7.0.0.1 was released December 14, 2004.

Bug Fixes:

• Corrected a bug where prefetch would cause AllegroSurf to crash pretty quickly in some cases.

AllegroSurf Version 7.0.0.0

AllegroSurf 7.0.0.0 was released December 7, 2004.

Changes:

• Added support for logging into NT domains. In addition to the AllegroSurf User database, AllegroSurf can check the NT login to allow use.
• Added support for user, group, and server limits. Limits can be based on days of the week and time of day and include the following:
  • Limit the time of day a user can login or when a server is available.
  • Limit upload transfer rate.
  • Limit download transfer rate.
  • Limit upload total (Outbound Quota).
  • Limit download total (Inbound Quota).
• Added the ability to define Custom HTML Messages for display in web browsers. This feature allows system administrators to fully customize login, logout, and other errors that AllegroSurf uses.
• Moved internal HTML messages to files. These files can be good examples for Custom HTML messages.
• Added the ability to compress transfers between two AllegroSurf computers. Zlib compression can be enabled just like SSL can be enabled for incoming (client) or outgoing (server) proxy servers. When used as a VPN between two locations, bandwidth consumption can be substantially reduced.
• Added the ability to use domain names or host names to identify users or in the IP range lists. By using DNS4Me or static domain names, AllegroSurf can allow users or assume a particular user based on a name resolved by DNS. This is a great feature when client computers are using dynamic IP addresses.
• Added domain name display to the "Current User's" list, if AllegroSurf determines a user is connected based on a domain name.
• Added support for ICRA filtering. When a web site uses ICRA rating standards as found here http://www.icra.org/faq/decode/, AllegroSurf performs appropriate actions depending on the content on the web site.
• Added the ability to print reports.
• Improved report building to use substantially less RAM, reading from disk instead. This will decrease report building speed, but will allow for larger log file processing.
• Substantially improved the efficiency of the underlying sockets code. Overall AllegroSurf is much faster and uses much less CPU time.
• Improved filtering word list checking to check for more punctuation such as "!" and "-".
• Improved filtering to include certain HTML characters tags.
• Improved the sex filtering list. If updating from a previous version, it is a good idea to delete the word lists found in the installation data directory.
• Improved filtering to move on much more quickly when it determines the next character after removing an item is not an HTML tag.
• Added the ability to enter a list of sites, such as search engine sites, that shouldn't be automatically added to the Banned Site List. This is an important feature so that search engine results are also filtered but still allowing search engine use.
• Added two scheduler maintenance task types to archive or rotate logs and audit files.
• Changed scheduled user log file deletion to delete all *.log files in the Audit directory, instead of just defined users.
• Added an additional backup file for AllegroSurf data files. Previous versions simply created a backup file before overwriting, this version keeps a 4 day old backup of the file.
• Added support for HTTP 1.1. By using HTTP 1.1 browsers can retrieve data much more quickly than with HTTP 1.0.
• Added user auditing settings to groups. When an individual user has auditing disabled, and the user belongs to a group, the group auditing settings are used.
• Added the ability to disallow assumed users access to individual proxy servers, allowing only forced user login for a server.
• If running on Windows XP or greater AllegroSurf now uses the 256 color icon in the system tray.
• Changed system tray icon popup tip to show the number of connected users and number of connections.
• Changed User Properties dialog to use a tree on the left instead of tabs.
• Changed release notes file to be more consistent with DNS4Me, FTP Voyager, and Zaep.
• When using reverse DNS for logging user activity, AllegroSurf treats that user as a Windows user, allowing you to define a group for Windows users, so that limits, and other Group properties may be enabled or disabled.
• When using reverse DNS for logging, the user database is checked for a matching user of the same name as the computer, giving you control on any user using AllegroSurf, without forcing login.
• Moved the Network Monitor into its own installer, made it a FREE option for AllegroSurf installations.
• Updated OpenSSL libraries from 0.9.6m to 0.9.7d.
• Changed AllegroSurf licensing so that it's not depending on the "Current Users", rather AllegroSurf now keeps track of connected IP addresses on a per running session basis.
• Changed the minimum "logged in" time of each user from 300 seconds to 60 seconds.
• Changed the default for ad filtering on WWW Proxies to FALSE.
• Changed the protocol type display to show the HTTP/1.1 or HTTP/1.0 from the request and response for the WWW proxy server.
• Changed the HTTP cache to remove expired entries when an expired entry request is made.
• Increased the buffer size when reading from the HTTP cache. This should improve the efficiency with which cached data is sent to the client computer.
• Changed the HTTP total and HTTP read from cache totals to 64 bit integers to support numbers statistics greater than 2GB.
• Improved the HTTP cache performance information to show by bytes, KB, MB, then GB instead of bytes only.
• Changed the AllegroSurf Voyager to stop sending request data at 175 active connections, starting again at 165.
• Improved forcing a password change, even for assumed users.
• Removed support for DirecPC.

Bug Fixes:

• Corrected a bug in the HTML prefetch where it could incorrectly attempt to prefetch pages when the HTML source code used single quotes instead of double quotes.
• Corrected the help topic display for the DHCP Reservation dialog.
• Corrected a bug where modifying users that had "Assumed" settings caused memory leaks.
• Corrected tray icon flicker on some Windows 2000 systems.
• Corrected a bug where HTTP header terminations were formatted incorrectly for most HTTP error messages such as forbidden.
• Corrected a problem where HTTP header problem where, in some cases, AllegroSurf's HTTP header response for filtered sites would appear in the web browser. This was due to some servers returning a complete header as the first full packet of data to AllegroSurf. In some cases this HTTP header information can still appear when filtering and certain meta tags and filters result in packets other than the first packet of data.
• Corrected a bug where email clients, such as Mozilla, would not work with the POP3 proxy server due to AllegroSurf closing the connection in response to a CAPA or AUTH command.
• Corrected a problem where AllegroSurf Voyager might not startup connected to the AllegroSurf Engine.
• Corrected a bug where sorting by the "Time" column for assumed user lists was not correct.
• Corrected a problem where filtering (ads, content, etc.) could skip or miss an item if it immediately follows an item that was removed.
• Corrected a problem where the Apple QuickTime installer may have failed when using AllegroSurf to download files.
• Corrected a problem where the Windows Update under XP may have failed.
• Corrected a problem where some web servers don't return an HTTP header for requests. If AllegroSurf doesn't see a proper HTTP response from the server initially, it simply passes the data through to the web browser.
• Corrected a bug where active connections would not go away in AllegroSurf Voyager unless another item was selected, then the monitor selected again.
• Corrected a bug where an active connection's transfer values would appear as "Unknown" until an actual transfer occurred, when selecting different AllegroSurf Voyager items.
• Corrected a problem when some browsers request "favicon.ico" on the AllegroSurf logout page, thus forcing AllegroSurf to log back in, for assumed users.
• Corrected a problem where some formatting characters could cause the user accounting dialog to constantly display an "invalid value" message box.
• Corrected a report problem where if some of the totals were greater than 2GB reports would appear incorrectly. Problem corrected by using 64 bit numbers instead of 32 bit.
• Corrected an HTTP caching problem where memory would be continually used until the cache was deleted manually or through a scheduled task.
• Corrected an HTTP caching problem where AllegroSurf could prematurely terminate sending data to the browser when filtering was enabled and reading from the cache.