The present invention relates to a packet recovery method for packets communicated between sender and receiver nodes of an overlay network that runs over an underlying IP network. The present invention executes a packet recovery process at a receiver node upon satisfaction of a packet recovery condition that is associated with meeting a deadline driven criteria for a transmitted packet. The packet recovery process associates N number of scheduled times with N requests for retransmission of the transmitted packet. At least one of the N scheduled times includes a receiver waiting time. At each N scheduled time, a request for retransmission of the transmitted packet is transmitted to a source node. A packet retransmission process at the sender node is executed upon the first receipt of a request for retransmission of the transmitted packet. In one embodiment, the packet retransmission process retransmits the transmitted packet to the receiver node at M number of scheduled times, where the N and M are non-zero positive integers and at least one of the N or M number of scheduled times is greater than one.