This feature was added to A-Shell in build 879 of 12 April 2004.

(Windows) A-Shell now determines its IP address on startup. In most cases, this will be invisible and painless, but if you have a software firewall (such as Zone Alarm) and/or a disfunctional internal DNS, the act of trying to determine the IP address may either trigger a hook in your firewall and/or cause a delay in launching an A-Shell session. A-Shell will automatically log the length of such a delay to the ashlog.log file if it exceeds 0.75 seconds. So if you notice a delay in launching A-Shell, you may want to check the log to confirm the source of the problem.