Java apps slow startup when connected to network

Question

I'm using Arch Linux with kernel 3.0 and brcmsmac to manage my wireless card. My desktop environment is KDE 4.7 and I use networkmanager to handle network. Recently I've been affected by a weird problem wherein whenever I'm connected to a network Java apps such as jEdit take ~30 seconds longer to start but behave normal once started. What could it be due to and how can I fix it?

EDIT:The problem occurs both with Oracle's JRE and OpenJDK, both versions 1.7. I'm behind a HTTP proxy, if that makes a difference.

EDIT:I've discovered the cause of this problem. My /etc/hosts file had the wrong host name in it. After correcting this to my hostname, everything is fine. I realized it was due to DNS thanks to bahamat's excellent answer. I still don't understand why exactly only Java apps were affected but it is fixed anyway.

Answer 1

Have you tried looking here?

Q: Why is jEdit so slow to start up?

A: Some plugins require a lot of setup - chances are if you disable one, you will be able to determine the culprit. jEdit normally starts up quite quickly without plugins

1. To go the Utilities menu and select Activity Log.
2. Scroll to the area where you see lines like “[notice] JARClassLoader: Starting plugin XXX”.

Your symptoms sound like a DNS timeout though. On Debian sun-java-jre depends on avahi (which is used for mDNS). Perhaps you have a plugin that's trying to do a DNS lookup that's timing out.