As Igor said, the network shield has always been a part of avast Home 4.x and later avast free versions.

I can’t understand your stunning comment “To the home users, this will make absolutly no difference in protecting your systems!”

What that shows is your lack of knowledge of exactly what the Network Shield does. Even back in the 4.x Home days it provided protection against exploits, DCOM, LSASS and worms on commonly used/exploited ports. So that does provide protection for home users also as we still see instances of this network shield intercepting these DCOM, LSASS exploits in the viruses and worms forum.

Since the inclusion of the malicious sites list into the virus definitions, which is used to specifically by the network shield, this also provides great protection for Home, non-commercial users. Again take a foray into the viruses and worms forum and look for all of the URL:MAL detections, were the network shield is blocking access to malicious sites. In many cases, this particular one is a very good indication that there is undetected/hidden malware on the users system.

So I suggest you do your homework (excuse the pun) before making the unbelievable statement “To the home users, this will make absolutly no difference in protecting your systems!”