A system and/or method for relaying messages in a network (e.g. a mobile network) are provided. Certain portable communications nodes are instrumented with omni-directional antennas. Certain static communications nodes are network cluster-head nodes with directional antennas, and, for example, achieve much of the gain possible when all nodes have directional antennas. Cluster-head communications preferably are used when the nodes are separable by the directional antennas. Preferably, there is a transition to mesh communications when the nodes cannot take advantage of the directional antennas. One feature of certain exemplary embodiments is that only one side of a communication link requires a directional antennal to enable spatial frequency reuse.