A system and method are disclosed comprising coupling one or more subscriber customer premise equipment (CPE) stations with a base station over a shared wireless bandwidth using a packet-centric protocol; and allocating the wireless bandwidth and system resources based on contents of packets to be communicated over the wireless bandwidth. The packet-centric protocol may comprise transmission control protocol/internet protocol or user datagram protocol/internet protocol. The method may include allocating the shared wireless bandwidth among the subscriber CPE stations so as to optimize end-user quality of service. In one embodiment, a system comprises a wireless MAC layer mediating local retransmission of lost packets without signaling TCP lost packets and without altering TCP transmission speed, the MAC layer also scheduling packet transmissions across a wireless medium employed by a wireless network.