After running with this new beta mac version (110609-0), yesterday ALL http/https connections to external servers started failing. I could still hit machines in my local LAN, but everything else started timing out.
After 5 hours of debugging & hair pulling, I disabled avast web shield and viola` everything was fine again.
Avast web shield is off for now.
Also, in an unrelated lower prio nit, avast clogs up the logs with filesystem events like:
6/9/11 7:40:53 AM kernel AvastFileShield: Req 36752: /Users/bedge/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2011 Identities/Main Identity/Data Records/Message Sources/0T/0B/1M/136K/x27_1136536 (reason 0x2)
over and over.