First off, i'd like to thank users of this site for being so generous and helpful. also, sorry the subject of this thread is so vague, i couldn't think of a concise way to describe my problem. that said, onto my problem:

i'm running suse 9.0 on a toshiba laptop with atheros 5100X+ integrated wireless. linux uses the driver ath_pci. also, i'm connecting to a linksys wireless b router configured as dhcp server, does not broadcast ssid. after some editing of various wlan and network configuration files, i'm able to get the wireless connection working, but in order to make the connection, i need to do 'ifup wlan0' a half-dozen or so times before linux recognizes the connection. also, my router gives me a higher IP than it should; eg i should get 100 or 101, but i end up with 106 up to 112. anyone have any ideas about what might be going wrong? might this have something to do with the settings on the router itself? what are the various router settings for, specifically the ones related to establishing connections? also, can anyone provide or direct me to more general information about the actual protocol used to establish the wlan connection between wlan device and router, ie connection requests, acks, etc...?

vielen dank!

Please post your
/etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-wlan0
file.

This might give some clues to missing settings, etc.

Also check /var/log/messages from around the time periods you do
ifup wlan0 and look for any error messages, etc.