[CentOS] No Network = slow ??

I lost my internet connection earlier today. My home network was still up - it's just the router couldn't get an IP from the cable modem.

During that period, my CentOS 5.1 install was extremely slow (2.6 GHz Athlon w/ 2GB ram) at starting non network applications - such as solitare and gnome terminal. It would pause for several seconds before finally starting them.

The machine does run bind as a caching nameserver - as I've found that to be more reliable than using my ISPs nameserver, so I'm guessing the slowdown was with bind not being able to resolve anything.

Is there anything I can do to prevent the slow application launching in the event of lost network in the future?