Rapid DHCP: Or, how do Macs get on the network so fast?

Interesting. I have Arch Linux running on a Asus Eee pc and I was always happy that it was connected and ready to go as soon as I woke it up from sleep (including WiFi). I can access the internet within a second of waking it up. I'm using NetworkManager and I wonder if it isn't doing something similar? But then everyone else on Linux is claiming it takes much longer.

Huh, interesting. My Asus EeePC 1000 has the slowest network sign-on of any of my devices, but I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 on it. I wonder of Arch Linux has better Wi-Fi drivers or something. I the author of the original blog post, and I performed a similar protocol analysis on my EeePC. Surprisingly, the DHCP handshaking was actually pretty fast, it just seems to take a long time to establish the link. I should really upgrade the OS one of these days.

I have a EeePC 900A and the driver for wireless is by far the best I've experienced on Linux.