to avoid the interferer during normal operation each client may detect a condition where another client is hidden from it the wlan administrator uses the wnm interface to specify when and how to act on this information these instructions are sent by radio manager 10 to each ap clients may be instructed to periodically report hidden stations so that aps may take corrective action by lowering the ready to send rts thresholds of the hidden clients as a result the serving ap clears the channel by issuing a clear to send cts notification before either of the clients transmits data which alleviates the hidden node problem radio manager 10 gains knowledge of the wlan radio environment through measurement reports obtained from aps and clients an embodiment of the present invention introduces five types of radio measurement reports beacon reports frame reports cca reports received power indicator rpi histograms and hidden node reports each of which indicates a particular rf characteristic or reports a particular rf event beacon and frame reports identify sources of 802 11 contention cca reports and rpi histogram reports characterize the degree of contention and interference hidden node reports identify stations colliding within the same bss fig2 illustrates the radio measurements introduced by embodiments of the present invention as shown the measuring client and one other client are associated with ap 1 but neither client detects the other 39 s signal ap 2 is close enough to be detected by the measuring client ap 3 is out of range but the measuring client does detect some of its associated clients measuring client 20 2 issues a beacon report identifying ap 2 as a source of 802 11 contention client 20 2 issues a frame report indicating contention from a client.