Patent ID: 7688788

Claim:
A method of a wireless terminal selecting an access point for connection that can provide a maximum estimated achievable bit rate to said wireless terminal, comprising: the wireless terminal probing each available access point and receiving congestion information and signal quality information from each access point related to a first modulation mode in response to said probes; determining the estimated achievable bit rate as a function of said congestion information and said signal quality information for each access point, wherein the signal quality information includes an estimation of the packet error rate of data from one of a set of available modulation modes at each access point based on the signal to noise ratio of a signal received in a first modulation mode from said each access point, and wherein the packet error rate in a second modulation mode at each access point is based on the packet error rate calculated in the first modulation mode; said second modulation mode being different from said first modulation mode; and the wireless terminal selecting an access point from said available access points to connect to that has the highest estimated achievable bit rate among said available access points.