A key design issue in relay based cooperative wireless networks is the metrics used for relay selection. Internal operational parameters and network sensing parameters are two categories recently considered as decision factors for cooperation strategies. We focus on the impact of these potential sensing parameters as indicators of the effective cooperation, from the perspective of the network layer, namely: movement, medium access delay and medium delay ratio. Simulation results indicate a strong correlation between network performance and the proposed cooperative metrics. Novel solutions for cooperation should take these metrics into consideration in order to provide better network performance.