Abstract: A randomly addressed polling (RAP) method for wireless networks is proposed to meet the requirements for wireless LANs which remain open to the research community. The RAP method has the following steps: When a base station is ready to conduct an up-link communication, it broadcasts a ready message to all users under its coverage; each user whenever has a packet to transmit generates a random number; all random numbers are simultaneously transmitted to the base station in response to the ready message; base station collects the random numbers, and polls the active users according to the collected random numbers; and when the base station successfully/unsuccessfully receives the packet from the user, it sends a positive/negative acknowledgment to the user.