Looks like OpenWRT turns up the transmit power to 255 when it starts up on the Linksys WRT54G. Not good…
WiFi      IEEE 802.11b/g  ESSID:“theinternetco.net”  Nickname:“acrux”           Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 00:0F:66:E3:FC:A8           Bit Rate:24 Mb/s   Tx-Power=31 dBm   Sensitivity=20/200           Retry min limit:8   RTS thr:2347 B   Fragment thr:2346 B           Encryption key:off           Link Quality:255/0  Signal level:-41 dBm  Noise level:-7 dBm           Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0           Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0
Good strong signal … outpaced several orders of magnitude by noise.
After a wl -i eth1 txpwr 40…
WiFi      IEEE 802.11b/g  ESSID:“theinternetco.net”  Nickname:“acrux”           Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 00:0F:66:E3:FC:A8           Bit Rate:54 Mb/s   Tx-Power=31 dBm   Sensitivity=20/200           Retry min limit:8   RTS thr:2347 B   Fragment thr:2346 B           Encryption key:off           Link Quality:16/0  Signal level:-55 dBm  Noise level:-126 dBm           Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0           Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0
Nice and clean!