In one embodiment, a hybrid packet repair scheme adaptively switches among unicast retransmission, multicast retransmission, and Forward Error Correction (FEC) depending on the receiver population and the nature of the error prompting the repair operation. The NACK patterns are used to heuristically determine the degree of correlation among packet losses. In an additional embodiment, wasting bandwidth and processing on retransmissions of FEC that will fail to correct the errors is avoided by evaluating the nature of the error and the bandwidth needed to optimally repair it. Unicast retransmission, multicast retransmission, or FEC repair is then dynamically performed according to the loss patterns derived from the NACK arrivals and other network conditions.