In an ad hoc peer-to-peer communication network between wireless devices, a high priory first receiver device is configured to perform successive interference cancellation (SIC). The first receiver device receives a first transmission request from a first transmitter device indicating that the first transmitter device intends to transmit traffic to the first receiver device. Similarly, the first receiver device receives a second transmission request from an interferer second transmitter device. The first receiver device then determines a transmission rate cap for the interferer second transmitter device based on the signal strengths of the first and second transmission requests and sends it to the interferer second transmitter device. The transmission rate cap is a maximum rate at which the first receiver device can reliably decode traffic signals from the second transmitter device.