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Operational wireless LANs (WLANs) have exhibited a user load that is often unevenly distributed among wireless access points (APs). This unbalanced load results in unfair bandwidth allocation among users. Unbalanced load and unfair bandwidth allocation can be greatly alleviated by intel ligently associating users to access points, so-called associa tion control, rather than allowing users to greedily associate access points with best received signal strength. In accordance with the principles of the present invention, fair load balancing is accomplished by a comprehensive asso ciation control scheme that provides guarantees on the quality of the bandwidth allocation against the optimal solution. This technique allows users to achieve reasonably good connec tions compared with the strongest received signal approach, when load-balancing is not done carefully in the latter. From experimental practice, it is shown …