A medium access control (MAC) protocol may be used to facilitate communication between nodes in a network. A protocol for allocating network resources between a set of nodes with demands may be an adaptive topology- and load-aware (TLA) allocation protocol. The allocation protocol may be executed by a bidder algorithm and an auctioneer algorithm on each node of the network. Claims and offers may be generated at each node and transmitted to other nodes on the network. The claims and offers may be updated as load and topology of the network change.