This disclosure describes techniques for employing an adaptive mechanism in communications among network devices. Adaptive mechanism techniques may include adapting network operations relative to characteristics of devices and/or network access technologies or mechanisms used in the network. Adaptation may help to accommodate a wider variety of types of devices. For instance, adaptive mechanism techniques may include determining, based on characteristics of a device in the network, a forwarding mechanism to be used at an access device to forward data traffic from the device to another device via the network. As such, adaptive mechanism techniques may provide more efficient integration of devices within a complex network, thereby improving network operations.