The IEEE 802.11e draft is a proposal defining the mechanisms for wireless LANs aiming to provide QoS support to time-sensitive applications, such as, voice and video communications. The 802.11e group is currently working hardly, but the ratification of the standard has a long way to go. In this paper we carry out a performance analysis on the effectiveness of the IEEE 802.11e (EDCA) upcoming standard. We show that the defaults parameters setting recommended in the EDCA draft standard by 802.11e group do not fulfill the requirements of time-sensitive services, such as, voice and video. We show that the performance of EDCA can be improved by properly tuning its parameters. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.