My LAN originally took about 3-5 minutes to achieve Internet connectivity. This was way too long for me, so I found [this fix](http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1698614/onboard-lan-connection-takes-time-active.html#10944088) which basically said:

> 
> In advanced settings of network adapter, for "Speed and Duplex" I set
>  "10 Mbps Full Duplex"
> 
> 
> 

I set it to "100Mbps Full Duplex" (previously, it was set to "Auto") and now my adapter achieves Internet connectivity almost instantly.

My question is, why did this fix my problem? I'm just curious as to the internal working in this situation.