Comment 7 for bug 95892

This looks more like a boot script issue. First, do you have linux-restricted-modules-generic installed (so that you have ipw3945d user space daemon), and also is the device configured correctly in /etc/network/interfaces?

If the latter is not true, then I suggest commenting out the entry for it in /etc/network/interfaces so that the startup scripts do not attempt to start the device (and hence, wait for it to come up, which is the cause of the delay). Then just use NetworkManager to configure the interface. Either that, or configure it correctly in /etc/network/interfaces.