A method and system for servicing data traffic in wireless local area networks (such as IEEE 802.11 networks) in multiple queues having different levels of priority. These queues include at least a low priority queue for `best effort` traffic, a medium priority queue for streaming data such as video pictures, and a high priority queue for voice traffic, and are serviced in order of decreasing priority. To prevent the `best effort` traffic in the low priority queue from being `starved`, a bit is set to indicate when such a condition is likely to occur, and the low priority queue is served first when that bit has been set. Alternatively, low and medium priority traffic is handled on a weighted round-robin basis, and high priority traffic is given strict priority over both. Transmit and receive queues are handled on a rotating priority basis.