The tremendous growth in the development of wireless networking techniques attracts growing attention to this research area. The ease of development, low installation and maintenance costs and self healing abilities are some of the qualities that make the multi-hop wireless mesh network a promising solution for both - rural and urban environments. Examining the performance of such a network, depending on the external conditions and the applied routing protocol, is the main aim of this research. It is addressed in an empirical way, by performing repetitive multistage network simulations followed by a systematic analysis and a discussion. This research work resulted in the implementation of the experiment and analysis tools, a comprehensive assessment of the simulated routing protocols - DSDV, AODV, OLSR and HWMP, and numerous observations concerning the simulation tool. Among the major findings are: the suitability of protocols for wireless mesh networks, the comparison of rural and urban environments and the large impact of conditions such as propagation, density and scale of topology on the network performance. An unexpected but valuable outcome is the critical review of the ns network simulator. / Mobile number: +48 660144055