A reference-order AL-FEC system for recovering network video data packet loss during real-time video communication includes a packetizer, a reference-order AL-FEC encoder, a reference-order AL-FEC decoder and a depacketizer. The packetizer constructs source symbols from source packets of a current frame. The encoder generates a repair symbol from the source symbols of the current frame and other reference frames based on the reference-order, not time-order, between the frames within an encoding window. The encoder also generates a repair packet based on the repair symbol. The decoder recovers a lost source symbol based on the source symbols of the frames of the encoding window and the repair symbol by decoding the repair packet. The decoding is achieved by solving a linear system of the repair symbol.