Embodiments of the present disclosure relate to routing data through a distributed communications network (DCN) including several communication devices. Each communication device may include or be in communication with a computing device which causes the communication device to perform actions including: calculate a utility score for a subset of the plurality of communication devices, the utility score quantifying transmissibility of a data packet from the transceiver assembly to another communication device. The utility score may be calculated based on: a distance between the transceiver assembly and the communication device, a transmission queue at the transceiver assembly, a remaining life of the power source, a power consumption to transmit the data packet to the communication device, and a data throughput of the communication device. The computing device may generate instructions to transmit the data packet to at least one communication device in the subset, based on the calculated utility score.