  Wireless LANs have achieved a tremendous amount of growth in recent years.
Among various wireless LAN technologies, the IEEE 802.11b based wireless LAN
technology can be cited as the most prominent technology today. Despite being
widely deployed, 802.11b cannot be termed as a well matured technology.
Although 802.11b is adequate for basic connectivity and packet switching, It is
evident that there is ample scope for its improvement in areas like quality of
service, fairness, performance, security, etc. In this survey report, we
identify and argue that the Medium Access Controller for 802.11b networks is
the prime area for these improvements. To enunciate our claims we highlight
some of the quality of service, fairness, and performance issues related to
802.11b MAC. We also describe and analyze some of the current research aimed at
addressing these issues. We then propose a novel scheme called the Intelligent
Collision Avoidance, seeking to enhance the MAC to address some of the
performance issues in 802.11b and similar networks.
