A method and apparatus for reasonably discriminating between an appropriately behaved wireless terminal and an inappropriately behaved wireless terminal is disclosed. In particular, some embodiments of the present invention are capable of reasonably discriminating between an appropriately behaved wireless terminal and an inappropriately behaved wireless terminal even though consecutive frames have heterogeneous rates (i.e., full-rate frames, half-rate frames, quarter-rate frames, etc.).An illustrative embodiment of the present invention receives a frame from a wireless terminal and determines how many "gated-on" groups are in the frame. The illustrative embodiment next determines how many power-down commands should be issued or have been issued to the wireless terminal in response to the received frame. Next, the illustrative embodiment compares the number of power-down commands for the frame to the number of gated-on groups for the frame. When the number of power-down commands equals or exceeds the number of gated-on groups for the frame, then the frame is counted as a violator, which suggests that the wireless terminal is misbehaved.