Prior results have shown that for ad hoc networks with uniform source-destination probabilities, where each node generates trafc, the transport capacity for each node in the network declines with the network size n [1]. In this paper, we show that the nite per-node throughput and hence scalability is achievable with the adjustment of source-destination pair distributions. We also explore the rate-distortion bound in the context of sensor networks. Considering a network over a nite region, with nite Gaussian point sources and densely distributed sensors, the otherwise difcult to obtain data rate region under a delity criterion, reduces to a partial side information problem for Gaussian sources. The key concept in proving this is to consider source, sensor, and communications relay densities as separate quantities.