Hmm...
http://packages.debian.org/etch/ntpdateIt's the 'arm' package, I'm supposing...
...or should I not be looking at Debian 'packages'?
Hmm, hmm...
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~ntp/ntp_spool/html/ntpdate.html
It says
-t timeout
Specify the maximum time waiting for a server response as the value timeout, in seconds and fraction. The value is is rounded to a multiple of 0.2 seconds. The default is 1 second, a value suitable for polling across a LAN.
Does that mean that all other boot-up actions are delayed by this value if no server is found?
I'm assuming that ntpdate is not smart enough to give up immediately if it doesn't see a network... which is why Bitt and Mark are leaning on ifconfig to find that out...