Wireless stays associated - loses ip address

Using opensuse 11.3 no problems for a while then one day recently started noticing that after going into suspend my wireless card will reconnect to the access point (associate) but not renew a dhcp lease. I have to become root and dhclient wlan0 then it is all good!

Wireless card: Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)

I haven’t been able to tell if it happens during use or not yet - still sussing that one out.

Is this more than likely a case of knetworkmanager strikes again! Or anybody know some ideas to get around it. (mostly for my wifes sake when I’m not around)