[jhallenworld]

There is an interesting way to make this work, inspired by "skip-list" data structure. Suppose you sell network radio gear. You want your customers to have a tree network instead of a mesh network to reduce the number of hops. So sell a random distribution of stations: most customers get short-range stations. Some get longer range stations. Some lucky few get very long range high capacity stations.

You will end up with a random geographic distribution of radios with different capabilities. The number of network hops will be reduced because, as with skip lists, you find a path to high capacity station, then skip longs distances, then find the final recipient.

In practice this would be difficult to deploy (Can you legally give high power stations? What about RF safety of higher power stations?), but I think the idea is neat.