Abstract: A system and method for determining the reliability of at least one communication link between nodes in an ad-hoc communication network. The system and method perform the operations of receiving at a first node data sent by a second node over a link from the second node to the first node, determining a bit error rate (BER) at which the first node received the data, and identifying the link from the second node to the first node as being reliable when a value determined based on at least the BER and, more specifically, an aggregate of the BER and BERs of data received by the first node from the second node over a period of time, meets a desired condition. The data sent by the second node can include routing advertisement data indicating at least one node which is a neighboring node of the second node, or can be any suitable regularly expected message.