Public wireless communications will increasingly extend into wireless LAN (WLAN) environments in order to meet the ubiquitous access, high data rate, and local services demands of future Internet appliances. By relying on IP-level services mechanisms, the Public Access Mobility LAN (PAMLAN) can simultaneously support different air interfaces, franchises for multiple services providers, and a multi-segment LAN environment including handoffs. The PAMLAN supports virtual operator LANs representing different network services providers, authorization and accounting mechanism, support of multiple air interfaces, and local IP mobility. A router associated with each base station realizes this highly distributed IP networking environment, and a QoS-enabled switched Ethernet core supports virtual networks and QoS services.