In an 802.11be wireless system, a receiving station device signals a packet padding capability in a wireless area network in accordance with an Extremely High Throughput (EHT) communication protocol by constructing a MAC control management frame to include an EHT capability element indicating whether a packet extension value longer than 16 μs is supported by the receiving station device, where one or more fields in the EHT capability element include (1) a common nominal packet padding field having a plurality of values to signal different packet extension values for use with all transmission constellations, spatial streams Nss, and resource unit (RU) allocations supported by the first STA device, including at least one packet extension value longer than 16 μs; and/or (2) a PHY packet extension threshold (PPET) field comprising a plurality of PPET values to signal packet extension values including at least one packet extension value longer than 16 μs.