Rather than starting from a generic base box, we should start from a base box that has already had the provisioning script run against it once before.
Running from a poor internet connection you at least know upfront exactly how much software will be downloaded (its all encapsulated in the initial base box ~ 800MB); so you can plan to do that overnight.
Then, when you're actually sitting at the keyboard typing vagrant up for the first time you should have a more speedy first boot experience.
Currently we specify a generic Ubuntu 12.04 Vagrant basebox and then do all the customisations onto that base box via a provisioning script in the Vagrantfile.
Rather than starting from a generic base box, we should start from a base box that has already had the provisioning script run against it once before.
Running from a poor internet connection you at least know upfront exactly how much software will be downloaded (its all encapsulated in the initial base box ~ 800MB); so you can plan to do that overnight.
Then, when you're actually sitting at the keyboard typing
vagrant up
for the first time you should have a more speedy first boot experience.