Abstract: A method and apparatus for improving throughput in a wireless local area (WLAN), which includes buffering a set of messages, identifying a target address for the set of messages, and concatenating the set of messages based on the target address. The target address can be either unicast, broadcast, multicast or combination of unicast, broadcast and multicast as described herein.

Abstract: In one embodiment of the present invention, an access point (111) receives a multicast packet intended for a particular multicast group. Upon receipt, the access point only rebroadcast the multicast packet over a wireless segment if it determines that there is at least one wireless subscriber unit (131) belonging to the particular multicast group and associated with the access point that did not originate the multicast packet. Optionally, if the multicast packet signals an automatic rebroadcast of the multicast packet over the wireless segment, the access point automatically rebroadcasts the multicast packet without determining whether there is at least one wireless subscriber unit belonging to the particular multicast group and associated with the access point that did not originate the multicast packet.