In this paper, we deal with connectivity and coverage problem in Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs). We used Friedman test to compare Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Tabu Search (TS). We found out that GA and TS have difference in their performance. Then, we used the implemented systems WMN-GA and WMN-TS to evaluate and compare the performance of the system for different distributions of mesh clients in terms of giant component and covered mesh clients. The simulation results shows that for big radius of communication distances WMN-GA performs better than WMN-TS for Uniform, Normal and Weibull distributions of mesh clients. For Exponential distribution WMN-TS performs better than WMN-GA for all radius of communication distances.

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