Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communications are described. A wireless node may receive one or more data messages which may include a set of packets that may each be associated with a sequence number. The set of packets may be received with a gap in the set of sequence numbers, indicating missing packets. The wireless node may forward the set of packets to a processing layer of the wireless node. The wireless node may then accept, from the processing layer of the wireless node, a set of duplicate (DUP) acknowledgment (ACK) messages based on the set of packets being forwarded to the processing layer while having the gap in the set of sequence numbers. The wireless node may transmit, a subset of the set of DUP ACKs rather than all of the set of DUP ACKs to another wireless node, such as a base station.