We characterize the performance of intra- and inter-session network coding (NC) in wireless networks using real-life implementations. We compare this performance to a recently developed hybrid approach, called CORE, which combines intra- and inter-session NC exploiting the code structure of the former to enhance the gains of the latter. We first motivate our work through measurements in WiFi mesh networks. Later, we compare state-of-the-art approaches, e.g., COPE, RLNC, to CORE. Our measurements show the higher reliability and throughput of CORE over other schemes, especially, for asymmetric and/or high loss probabilities. We show that a store and forward scheme outperforms COPE under some channel conditions, while CORE yields 3dB gains.