An apparatus and method of a mobile node selecting a transmission channel of a mesh network is disclosed. The method includes the mobile node detecting a quality of routing beacons received over a previously selected transmission channel. If the quality of the routing beacons is below a predetermined threshold, then the mobile node transmits probe requests on each of a plurality of available transmission channels. Responses to the probe request are collected from at least one upstream access nodes over at least one of the available transmission channels. A new transmission channel is selected based upon the responses received over the available transmission channels.