Is NetworkManager forcing 1Mb/s rate?

[david briley]

Hi all, 
I've been battling this issue: my wireless speeds are grindingly slow. iwconfig while connected returns:

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:"onigiri"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.422 GHz  Access Point: 00:21:7C:9D:CB:61   
          Bit Rate=1 Mb/s   Tx-Power=27 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=16/100  Signal level=16/100  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

using iwconfig to set rate above 1M has mixed success, inevitably crashing the network at some point; much sooner if it is set above 24Mb/s.
Also, changes to rate through iwconfig do not survive reboot. 

Via google, I've found people complaining about this problem in both Fedora and Ubuntu circles, with a seemingly wide variety of hardware, and have read various patches in bugreports (none of which worked for me).

My questions are: Is there a fix for this? Or even just a good scripting tutorial that you can point me at so that I can artificially set rate up on boot?
and: Is NetworkManager possibly the culprit, and where do I go to file a bugreport for it if so?

I'm curious to hear what you think.
Thanks,
David