In one embodiment, techniques are shown and described relating to a mixed centralized/distributed algorithm for risk mitigation in sparsely connected networks. In particular, in one embodiment, a management node determines one or more weak point nodes in a shared-media communication network, where a weak point node is a node traversed by a relatively high amount of traffic as compared to other nodes in the network. In response to determining that a portion of the traffic can be routed over an alternate acceptable node, the management node instructs the portion of traffic to reroute over the alternate acceptable node.