  In this paper we consider security-related and energy-efficiency issues in
multi-hop wireless networks. We start our work from the observation, known in
the literature, that shortest path routing creates congested areas in multi-hop
wireless networks. These areas are critical--they generate both security and
energy efficiency issues. We attack these problems and set out routing in outer
space, a new routing mechanism that transforms any shortest path routing
protocol (or approximated versions of it) into a new protocol that, in case of
uniform traffic, guarantees that every node of the network is responsible for
relaying the same number of messages, on expectation. We can show that a
network that uses routing in outer space does not have congested areas, does
not have the associated security-related issues, does not encourage selfish
positioning, and, in spite of using more energy globally, lives longer of the
same network using the original routing protocol.
