Techniques are disclosed that involve communicating in bursty noise environments. For instance, a source device may send a probing packet to a destination device. This probing packet is for determining whether the communications medium (e.g., one or more frequency channels) is currently exhibiting a busy or jammed (e.g., due to bursty noise) condition. More particularly, based on whether an acknowledgment of the probing packet is received, the source device determines whether the channel is jammed (or busy) or clear. For example, an unacknowledged probing packet indicates that the channel is jammed or busy, while an acknowledged probing packet indicates that the channel is clear. If the channel is determined to be clear, then the source device may transmit one or more data packets to the destination device. Such data packet transmissions may be in accordance with a non rate-adaptive technique.