Packet recovery mechanisms for wireless networks, which improve end-to-end (e2e) reliability, are provided. First embodiments include packet retransmission between a receiver and a transmitter, wherein, if the transmitter cannot find a lost packet in its transmission buffer, the transmitter sends a First Sequence Number (FSN) report to the receiver to notify the receiver of a sequence number (SN) of an oldest (acknowledged) packet in the buffer. In response, the receiver does not report lost packets whose SN is older than the FSN. Second embodiments involve using a network coding algorithm to recover lost packets, wherein the transmitter sends a control message to the receiver that includes a coded packet to be recovered and information for decoding the coded packet. Other embodiments may be described and/or claimed.