A system and method for monitoring dropped packets are provided. A method for communications device operations includes receiving a sequence of packets from a transmitting station, where each packet in the sequence of packets includes a protocol layer packet for each protocol layer of multi-layered network. The method also includes determining if a packet in the sequence of packets has been dropped by the transmitting station, where the determining is based on at least two sets of sequence numbers associated with different protocol layers of packets in the sequence of packets. The method further includes updating a packet discard counter based on the determining.