There is an interesting way to make this work, inspired by &quot;skip-list&quot; 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.<p>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.<p>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.