Slow web server when not on Internet
 

I don't know if this is more of a networking problem or a Debian problem:

I have Debian Sarge installed on 2 machines: one server and one workstation. The server is a firewall, web server and file server.

The home page of the web browser on the workstation comes from the server. When I am connected to the Internet and I open the browser, my home page comes up immediately and the links on it work as they should. But when I am NOT connected to Internet, the home page takes a really long time (1m:46s!) to load.

On the workstation, nothing is changed when Internet connection is made: iptables is empty and route is local only, with the server set as default gw. On the server, the route is the same when not on Internet, but Internet connection (though dial-up) adds route for ppp0 IP only, setting that as the default gateway for the server only.

I am not running a DNS server, but server and workstation have identical /etc/hosts files which includes each other. This same setup worked as it should when the server was running Fedora Core 3 and the workstation Fedora Core 1. On the server, 'ps -A' shows that apache2 is running.

So what have I missed that makes my web server so slow when I'm not connected to the Internet?