[Madwifi-users] how to set bitrate and tx power

[H.S. <hs....@gm...>]

Hello,

I am using a D-Link DWL-G520 PCI wireless card in master mode as an 
access point. In transfering files through this wireless router, I am 
getting very low transfer rate, around 1.8 MBps. This is on a Debian 
Etch machine running 2.6.17 kernel and madwifi drivers.

This is what I get when I ifconfig interface:
~# ifconfig ath0
ath0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:15:E9:B3:EF:25
           inet addr:192.168.5.1  Bcast:192.168.5.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
           inet6 addr: fe80::215:e9ff:feb3:ef25/64 Scope:Link
           UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:2290  Metric:1
           RX packets:245073 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
           TX packets:256914 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
           collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
           RX bytes:20930108 (19.9 MiB)  TX bytes:222148053 (211.8 MiB)


and its rate setting is this:
~# iwlist ath0 rate
ath0      12 available bit-rates :
           1 Mb/s
           2 Mb/s
           5.5 Mb/s
           11 Mb/s
           6 Mb/s
           9 Mb/s
           12 Mb/s
           18 Mb/s
           24 Mb/s
           36 Mb/s
           48 Mb/s
           54 Mb/s
           Current Bit Rate:0 kb/s


I have tried setting the bitrate to 54 Mb/s but I get this error:
~# iwconfig ath0 rate 54
Error for wireless request "Set Bit Rate" (8B20) :
     SET failed on device ath0 ; Invalid argument.


I am sure I am not doing this the right way. What am I doing wrong? How 
do I specify the transfer rate? Or more generally, what steps can I take 
to get the best transfer rate for my home wireless lan?

thanks,
->HS