it is currently operating on this functionality allows stas operating on these different channels to learn about the existence of the ap without having to tune their receivers to other channels thereby avoiding communication disruption a method 100 for discovering aps in a wlan in accordance with the present invention is shown in fig1 the method 100 begins by determining whether the ap has met a predetermined condition for transmitting an advertisement packet step 102 an ap may decide to advertise itself on other channels only if certain conditions are satisfied these conditions include for example 1 sufficiently low load conditions in the bss served by the ap so that the ap can tune to the other frequency channels to transmit its advertisement packets without excessive disruption there is no need for an ap to advertise itself if it cannot accommodate new stas the ap can avoid having its associated stas transmit information to it during the time it is transmitting the advertisement packet by for example sending request to send rts or clear to send packets cts to itself or calling a contention free period 2 indications received from neighboring ap s via inter ap signaling that congestion exists in their bsss and that there is a need to off load traffic to another channel 3 the ap could discover by itself that congestion exists in the other channels by periodically tuning to the other channels for short periods of time and listening to the traffic on each channel 4 the ap u201c knows u201d if there are stas in the extended service set ess that require fast roaming for example if the stas use delay sensitive applications such as voice the ap could learn this information via inter ap.