Wireless ad hoc networks raised a series of challenging research tracks. In order to analyze and validate research results achieved, thorough performance evaluation efforts are needed. In this context, the contribution of this paper is twofold: at the one side we investigate the effect of forwarding in wireless ad hoc networks, drawing the throughput behavior under variation of connectivity, interference and number of sources; on the other side we propose Stochastic Automata Networks (SAN) as a formalism well suited to the area because of its modularity, allowing model reuse and the structured stepwise representation of important aspects of the reality, and due to its ability to deal with models of considerable sizes, allowing the analytical evaluation of more complex situations.