Major bug with wired/wireless connections in Debian 7

[linuxthefish <linuxthefish@gmail.com>]

Hello,

It looks like Debian will only connect to a wireless network when the
ethernet cable has been plugged in and unplugged. Both the wired and
wireless connections are set to automatically come up - but wireless
will not come up and fails to respond to ping unless a ethernet cable
has been plugged in.

This even applies if the ethernet cable was plugged into a random
network, or a switch with no other ports in use!

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 172.16.0.4
gateway 172.16.0.1
netmask 255.255.0.0

allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet static
wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant0.conf
address 172.16.0.5
gateway 172.16.0.1
netmask 255.255.0.0

Thanks!