slow network name resolution?

[Dave Howorth <dhoworth@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk>]

I recently installed Debian on a PC for the first time, and consequently 
have some questions.  One that I thought it might be appropriate to ask 
on this forum concerns network speed.

The PC is on a local network connected to the Internet and connections 
generally appear to work properly, but there is a delay which seems to 
be around the time the PC is trying to resolve a hostname (e.g. a delay 
while loading pages in the browser, or before ping starts to send 
packets).  Once a connection is established, data transfer speeds are 
what I would expect.

This problem does not occur with other machines on the network 
(including an identical PC installed with Suse Linux) so I suspect some 
quirk of Debian's network configuration (3.0r1 stable).

Does anybody recognize this problem?  Or perhaps can point me to the 
appropriate documentation to investigate it.

Thanks and regards,
Dave Howorth