The defaults in wireless.opts, especially for lucent wavelan cards are not
set for the most common usage.  Most people like to use wireless cards with
access points, however it defaults to Ad-Hoc for lucent cards.  I think the
 lucent section should look like:

# Lucent Wavelan IEEE (+ Orinoco, RoamAbout and ELSA)
# Melco/Buffalo Networks WLI-PCM-L11
# Note : wvlan_cs driver only, and version 1.0.4+ for encryption support
*,*,*,00:60:1D:*|*,*,*,00:02:2D:*)
    INFO="Wavelan IEEE example (Lucent default settings)"
    ESSID="any"
    MODE="Managed"
#    RATE="auto"
#    KEY="s:secu1"
# To set all four keys, use :
#   KEY="s:secu1 [1] key s:secu2 [2] key s:secu3 [3] key s:secu4 [4] key [1]"
# For the RG 1000 Residential Gateway: The ESSID is the identifier on
# the unit, and the default key is the last 5 digits of the same.
#   ESSID="084d70"
#   KEY="s:84d70"
    ;;