Systems and methods for protecting DSL systems against impulse noise are provided. Disclosed herein are example embodiments of a retransmission technique located above the gamma interface (i.e., in the network processing layer). Such a retransmission technique can be combined with standard RS coding with standard erasure-decoding & triangular interleaving at the PMS-TC layer. Example embodiments of the technique involve using the RS code to protect against REIN noise, and using γ-layer retransmission for protecting against error events not corrected by the RS code, e.g. a SHINE noise in the presence of REIN. Both techniques are used jointly in the case of combined REIN and SHINE noise.