David Brownell [off-list ref] wrote:

Does this sound familiar to anyone?  Got a fix that's better than
sticking to a 2.6.26 kernel?  :)

FWIW, I'm seeing the same thing with -rc4 and the b43 driver, so it's
probably not a regression in iwl3945. I guess it could be something in
mac80211?

I'm currently working around it by manually running iwconfig while
nm-applet is bringing the interface up. A bit annoying, but it
works...and it indicates that the driver works fine, but NetworkManager
doesn't know that it's supposed to do any wireless configuration before
bringing the interface up.

Haavard