If you know enough bash and awk-scripting, you could check out the relevant bash-scripts like /usr/sbin/netcardconfig

These might also be relevant:
/etc/init.d/knoppix-autoconfig - for hardware detection
/usr/sbin/ndiswrapper.sh - for wireless cards

If you don't understand those, you might also check out the relevant configuration files in /etc
At least /etc/network/ seems to contain some relevant files.

This information is for Knoppix 4.0.2 CD. I'm not sure if these script-names are same in Knoppix 5.