[CentOS] No Network = slow ??

Wed Apr 16 22:00:43 UTC 2008
Michael A. Peters <mpeters at mac.com>

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?