Power control in direct sequence-coded vision multiple access (DS-CDMA) systems and, more recently, power/rate allocation in multirate DS-CDMA based networks is an open and interesting research area which has attracted much attention. However, with a few exceptions, most researchers have emphasized centralized resource allocation algorithms for cellular systems where the base station keeps track of the requirements of the various users and is thus responsible for the management of network resources. Ad hoc wireless local area networks (WLAN's), on the other hand, are generally configured as peerto-peer networks with no centralized hub or controller. Thus resource allocation has to be conducted in a distributed fashion. We address the issue of distributed resource management for multirate DS-CDMA based multimedia WLAN's by 1) presenting a distributed resource allocation protocol, known as distributed resource negotiation protocol (DRNP) that builds on the RTS/CTS bandwidth reservation mechanism provided by IEEE 802.111, and provides quality of service (QoS) guarantees through distributed control of resources in DS-CDMA based multimedia WLAN's and 2) investigating the performance of various resource allocation schemes within the context of DRNP, in terms of network wide metrics such as overall throughput and blocking rates.