Ubuntu Networking :: 10.4.1 - Gateway NV59 Laptop (No Wireless Access)

I am completely new to linux in any flavour. I installed ubuntu 10.4.1 64-bit on my Gateway NV59 laptop as a dual boot with Windows 7. The installation went just fine. When it comes to networking, I can connect to my home network when wired directly, wireless is another matter. I can connect wireless in windows just fine, so the card is physically fine.

My set up is as follows:
Gateway NV59 laptop with Atheros AR928X PCI-E wireless adapter
Linksys WRT54G router using WPA2 Personal and a class C address scheme (192.168.x.x)
(If anyone thinks it would be necessary to post actual hardware specs of the laptop, I can, but don't think it really necessary). I have followed the Wifi Wireless Troubleshooting Guide found at [URL].

When connecting to my network wirelessly, I click the icon in the top right, and choose "Create New Wireless Network". When I input my settings (SSID - not broadcast, and security type and key - WPA), it then states I am connected under the "Wireless Networks" section found in that menu, and shows my network name with a strong signal and a computer/monitor icon. When I double-click the icon, it tells me I am connected and that the connection is active, yet the actual wireless icon on the top bar is grey, not white, and has a red exclamation mark on it. According to the steps in the troubleshooting guide, my wireless card is recognized and installed, with a driver of ath9k.

When I run lsmod, the driver is listed, therefore loaded, and ndiswrapper is NOT listed. I have verified that the driver is communicating with the kernel. When I scan for my router, it is listed under Cell 04, with the correct SSID and hardware address. There do not appear to be multiple drivers loaded, and my wifi is NOT disabled. When I check to see if I'm associated with a router, iwconfig shows my network ssid under wlan0, with the correct hardware address listed under Cell:, yet I cannot ping my router's internal ip address. At this point, I ran ifconfig, and for some reason, my wireless card has been given a class A address of 10.42.43.1.

When I try to assign an ip address via dhcp, DHCPDISCOVER runs for a number of intervals and then tells me "No DHCPOFFERS received", yet my router is using dhcp to assign ips with a pool of 50, more than enough ips for all the hardware in my network. When I run the command "sudo invoke-rc.d networking restart", I get the statement "Ignoring unknown interface wlan0=wlan0" - not sure what that means, but doesn't sound good to me, and retrying to accquire an ip address through dhcp still does not work. If I attempt to assign an ip address within my network range manually, I first run the command "sudo ifconfig wlan0 down", then just out of curiosity to see if the interface is really down.

I run ifconfig again, and wlan0 is no longer listed, but now there is eth0 (my regular ethernet interface) with no ip address. AND another interface is listed - eth0:avahi with the same hardware address as eth0, and an address of 169.254.4.42 - this seems to be the default address the OS will assign when it cannot get one via dhcp, but I have no idea why it has shown up as eth0::avahi... Anyway, after entering the command "sudo ifconfig ip addr 192.168.x.x netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.x.255 up" with the appropriate addresses, I receive the error "addr: Unknown host".

What I have NOT tried, are the following steps:
1. Change my router to an open signal (I would prefer not to do this, but will, if it is absolutely necessary for troubleshooting)
2. Try gtk wifi, or wifi radar
3. Try booting with kernel option pci=noacpi or acpi=off (not entirely sure how to do this just yet)
4. Try wpa supplicant (not sure what this is, just noted it was in the troubleshooting guide)