Is there a reliable way of cleanly delaying network interface initialisation in Debian/Knoppix until after the kernel modules have been loaded?

I'm trying to get an Atmel-based USB device (see http://at76c503a.berlios.de) to be configured automatically at boot-up, but the networking gets initialised too quickly, and by the time the modules get loaded, the networking needs to be manually restarted to pick up the settings in /etc/network/interfaces.

The Debian documentation wasn't too forthcoming with information about this, as far as I could find. Any suggestions?