desires to make a decision quickly in addition it is also difficult to use beacons to measure the packet loss rate since the beacons are generally broadcast with a fixed low data rate which is more tolerant of bit errors than other rates and which may be different from the actual data transmission rate thus to reduce scanning time for the ap rn selection a hybrid approach of measurement and estimation to obtain the packet loss rate is used in the present invention specifically the received signal strength of a beacon or probe response message is used to estimate the packet loss rate and expected data transmission rate given a radio technology and physical layer mode the packet loss rate can be estimated from the channel signal to noise ratio snr u03b3 for ieee 802 11b with a physical layer phy mode m where m 1 2 3 and 4 for 1 2 5 5 and 11 mbps data rates respectively the packet loss probability can be calculated by e m s u03b3 1 u2212 1 u2212 p e u2014 data m s u03b3 u00b7 1 u2212 p e u2014 ack m 6 where s is the packet size p e u2014.