Comment 7 for bug 940485

I have a firewire netowork cable whit fixed IP in /etc/network/interfaces, and have the same problem.
I do a workaround with this tip:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/185515/disable-network-configuration-services-during-boot-time

A better ideea than disabling the service is to remove the sleep time. To do this, open /etc/init/failsafe.conf with your favourite editor, and around line 25 you should see the following lines of code:

# Plymouth errors should not stop the script because we *must* reach
# the end of this script to avoid letting the system spin forever
# waiting on it to start.
$PLYMOUTH message –text=”Waiting for network configuration…” || :
sleep 40
$PLYMOUTH message –text=”Waiting up to 60 more seconds for network configuration…” || :
sleep 59
$PLYMOUTH message –text=”Booting system without full network configuration…” || :

To solve your problem, just comment the sleep times (add '#' in front of the text). It should look like this:

# Plymouth errors should not stop the script because we *must* reach
# the end of this script to avoid letting the system spin forever
# waiting on it to start.
$PLYMOUTH message –text=”Waiting for network configuration…” || :
#sleep 40
$PLYMOUTH message –text=”Waiting up to 60 more seconds for network configuration…” || :
#sleep 59
$PLYMOUTH message –text=”Booting system without full network configuration…” || :