Hosts/dns contention in FBSD 5.4

[Malcolm Kay]

I have sytems both at home and at work running FreeBSD 5.4 
release with a more or less standard installation. 

Both systems are connected to internet routers via a nics;
and under normal circumstances all works fine -- or at least 
seems to be working fine. In both cases there are other 
computers connected via LAN.

But if the internet connection breaks -- e.g. the routers crash
or the ISP connection fails for some reason then trying to ssh 
into the machine from another local machine is a problem -- 
either timing out our taking a very very long time.

With the internet connection down I notice a similar problem when
booting in the sendmail script.

Now it is my understanding that resolution of host names should 
determine from /etc/host.conf and/or /etc/nsswitch.conf whether 
to first try /etc/host or the dns server addressed by 
/etc/resolv.conf

I believe these should give preference to /etc/hosts but 
never-the-less things get stuck when the dns server can't be 
reached.

************/etc/host.conf****************
# Auto-generated from nsswitch.conf, do not edit
hosts
bind

************/etc/nsswitch.conf************
group: compat
group_compat: nis
hosts: files dns
networks: files
passwd: compat
passwd_compat: nis
shells: files

Am I missing something? (Probably)
Is this behaviour normal?
Can the lockups be avoided?

Any help, ideas or clarification would be appreciated.

Malcolm Kay