12. The program product of claim 8 wherein the characteristics of the plurality of networks comprise network utilization.
8. A program product comprising software residing on non-transitory computer-readable media, the software comprising: a network monitor that monitors characteristics of a plurality of networks and generates a log of the characteristics of the plurality of networks; a query optimizer that takes network choice into consideration when executing a database query to a plurality of nodes in a distributed database that retrieves first data on a first of the plurality of nodes in the distributed database and second data on a second of the plurality of nodes in the distributed database, the plurality of nodes coupled to each other via the plurality of networks, each of the plurality of networks comprising a communication path between at least two of the plurality of nodes in the distributed database, the plurality of networks comprising first and second networks that provide alternative network connections to the first node, the query optimizer considering characteristics of the plurality of networks between the at least two nodes in selecting at least one of the plurality of networks for executing the query, wherein the query optimizer logs historical information for queries that indicates past network selection when executing each of the queries and selects one of the first and second networks for executing the query based on the historical information that includes which of the first and second networks were used during at least one previous execution of the query and based on information in the log of the characteristics of the plurality of networks that indicates characteristics of the first and second networks.