A technique is disclosed for re-enabling transmission protection at enhanced stations while in the presence of high, enhanced modulation traffic conditions once protection has been disabled. Transmission protection allows enhanced modulation stations to co-exist with legacy modulation stations on a shared-communications channel. The problem being solved is when transmission protection is set to inactive and the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (i.e., enhanced modulation) traffic load is high, legacy traffic is likely to collide repeatedly with Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing transmissions, with the result that the access point does not notice that a legacy station has become active again. Consequently, the access point does not activate transmission protection. The present invention addresses the problem by defining access point mechanisms that are capable of re-enabling transmission protection, once protection has been disabled, in the presence of high, enhanced modulation traffic conditions.