If I live in one state and my parents live a few states over, would I be able to use this network to communicate with them? Not sure if this is a mesh network for long range routing.
If I live in one state and my parents live a few states over, would I be able to use this network to communicate with them? Not sure if this is a mesh network for long range routing.
Hello, sorry for the random question, but I’m new and still trying to understand the benefits of joining the network and how it works
What is the point of a network that:
Is the main use case just connecting e.g. a couple of sensors on a remote farm a few kilometers away from your house, and have 2 neighbours relaying the messages to you along the way? 🤔 Why does that need a decentralized peer-to-peer network if it can just be done by simple repeaters?
I have these questions as well. I am subscribed anyway because I find the subject interesting. My assumption is that the protocol will not remain static and that with higher rates of adoption, the network will grow in strength and therefore usability and will evolve to accommodate that. Ultimately, a simple network that say, even just 10% the country participated in may be enough to allow universal off-grid communication which could be extremely useful. But there are a lot of roadblocks (not the least of which are the technical aspects you mention). There will also be a lot of exterior pressure along the way to adapt, extend and extinguish from capital interests.
@gkaklas @TechnoCat What is “too far away”? I’m seeing nodes up to 120k away in meshtastic and 220+km in meshcore, specifically the meshcore network in my area is spanning three nations and their capitals.
Milwaukee, WI to Lansing, MI. Has to go around a great big lake and back up.
Hmm, you’re right, I guess I don’t mean the distance of the link by itself, but rather the fact that the number of hops and the dependence on central (?) high-power long-range nodes limits how far a message can go
While technically a mesh network, I’m not sure that with 3-7 hops it provides the benefits of one; in theory, just by being mesh it should be able to have a much larger (unlimited?) reach, just like the Internet.
Instead, from what I understand, user nodes are recommended to not participate in the routing, = they are just clients, but by being “mesh” they would be expected to actively participate in the network.
In this sense of “peer-to-peer”, we could say that my ISP is also a peer, and if it lost the connection to all other ISPs it could still continue working within the reach of its infrastructure, = my ISP is off-grid as well, and my connection to the ISP is independent since they own the fiber
Instead, I think the focus should be on building a distributed mesh network that is resilient and can’t be taken down by the failure of a couple of nodes. Similarly, with the dependence on LoRa radios: if e.g. the import or usage specifically of LoRa™®© chips is banned, the nodes who chose to use alternative technologies would not be affected and the network could continue to operate normally
@gkaklas My take is that for the given constraints (low-power, cheap, low-bandwidth) it works pretty well. If you want a more flexible (but way less beginner-friendly) mesh, have a look at reticulum, that can use all kinds of transport technologies.
Of course! I’m just curious about 1) what are the real world use cases (e.g. my farm example) and 2) how come Meshtastic™®© is so popular with people who experiment with RF but don’t have these constraints; how come that having a couple of points of failure (either in the nodes or the technology) and not being able to experiment outside of LoRa™®© is not more of an issue
(For example I found:)
I was looking into it, seems more like what I have in mind, thank you!