Methods and systems for uneven segmentation of data packets to reduce retransmission penalty accumulated as a result of having to retransmit one or more of the last segments. The method includes segmenting a data packet into segments of different sizes, with generally larger segments in the first half and smaller segments in the second half, and transmitting the segments over an intermediate communication link to another node. The transmission of the segments begins before receiving the entire data packet, and retransmission of a corrupted segment takes place as soon as an indication indicative of the corrupted segment is detected.