Linux zd1211 Wireless Speed Fix

For some reason my Belkin 54Mbps USB wifi adapter operates at 1 Mb/s under Linux.
It's detected as the following by lsusb:

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 050d:705c Belkin Components F5D7050 Wireless G Adapter v4000 [Zydas ZD1211B]

If I do a iwconfig wlan0 rate 54M the card starts working at 54Mb/s. To fix this more permanently I added the following to my /etc/network/interfaces file:

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
        wpa-ssid 56k
        wpa-psk secret
        wireless-rate 54M