A method and apparatus according to the technique wherein support of a quality of service is provided for transmissions between at least one node (N) and at least one mobile station (MS1) in a multihop communication environment. Support is ensured by checking the quality of service class of each transmission prior to transmission. Once the checking has been performed, depending on the class of the checked transmission a multihop transmission or a direct transmission is selected for the transmission to the at least one mobile station, whereby a transmission having a quality of service class belonging to a first class of quality of service classes is transmitted using the direct transmission, whereas a transmission having a quality of service class belonging to a further class of quality of service classes is transmitted using the multihop transmission.