by "connecting directly" I mean I plugged one end of the CAT5 cable into my laptop and the other end into the WAP. This is how Linksys has you do the inital setup.
I need the IP of the WAP to get into it and make changes to the SSID and security settings.
I have used multiple methods of attempting to find the IP, and even the router (Linksys) does not believe that it is assigning IPs to these WAPs, because they are not listed in it's DHCP client table. Look @ LAN essentially pings evey device on the network and returns it's IP and description, but it cannot find these WAPs (on two entirely different networks now).
I also used "arp -g" on the host to manually assign an IP based on the MAC address and had no success.
All of this while connected to the network and internet wirelessly through one of the APs.