wireless connection

[Unknown]

wireless connection

i've been running ubuntu 10.04 on an asus eee pc 1005ha, and
two panasonic cf-50s, with wireless connections to a netgear
mr814 -- 802.11b -- old, running without wep or wpa, just
requiring the mac addresses be listed in the router (and
yes, you have told me that's poor security).

i set up the wireless interconnection using the
nm-connection-editor, set to manual, specifying the address,
and this worked fine.  i put the addresses of my local
computers in /etc/hosts and could scp, ssh etc back in forth
at will by name -- all fine.

i decided to upgrade for more speed/range to a dlink
dir-655, 802.11n, with wpa security.

naturally i needed to add the key, but was unable to make
connection, even with reboot.  backing off to dhcp protocol,
it still wouldn't connect, but on reboot it did.  

with the proper values in /etc/network/interfaces, 
sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart switched the address
from 192.168.0.101 to 192.168.0.3 (e.g.) which is where i
leave it, but on reboot, it still comes up 192.168.0.101.
even when i'm happily chugging away with 192.168.0.3, it
occasionaly switches back to 192.168.0.101 all by itself.

i get similar performance on all three computers.

something i'm doing isn't right, but i have no idea what.

any suggestions?

tia.

ole dan