wireless giving trouble in Ubuntu recently

[H.S.]

Hello,

I have noticed that in the last few days, I am not able to connect via 
the Networking GUI to my home wireless network. This on a Dell Inspiron 
5160 laptop using bcm43xx kernel module on a 2.6.15 kernel. Is there 
something wrong in the networking GUI package or some related packages? 
  The laptop has a broadcom 1350 mini pci card:
  {~}> lspci | grep -i ethernet 0000:02:01.0 Ethernet controller: 
Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02)

If I give a new essid and a wep key in the Networking GUI and try to 
connect, I notice that the entries in /etc/network/interfaces are not 
immediately updates.

Comments about this are welcome.

Thanks,
->HS