I have DHCP set up on my laptop, and when it cannot find a DHCP server, it seems to "disable" the interface entirely. I can try and mannually assign an IP address on the network, but everything on the network is still unreachable (with the exection of my own IP). I checked to see if any iptables/chains were set up, but that dosnt seem to be the culpret. The only way around it is to set the interface to a static IP and reboot (or go to runlevel 1 and back, which is almost the same thing) Any ideas why this is happening?