_______ __ _______
| | |.---.-..----.| |--..-----..----. | | |.-----..--.--.--..-----.
| || _ || __|| < | -__|| _| | || -__|| | | ||__ --|
|___|___||___._||____||__|__||_____||__| |__|____||_____||________||_____|
on Gopher (inofficial)
URI Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI I'm Getting into Mesh Networks (Meshtastic, MeshCore, and Reticulum)
zuzululu wrote 51 min ago:
I think this is a great movement. I'm also concerned that this is going
to be certainly popular with criminals. So there's always this cat and
mouse game with new technology like this. I don't know enough about the
technology behind this to speculate further.
xrd wrote 2 hours 1 min ago:
Really interesting to see that the ham radio spectrum prohibits
encryption.
kgwxd wrote 5 hours 14 min ago:
Just to throw in my experience, got 2 RAK19007 after the last HN post.
Mostly just for me and my kid to play with. He took an interest in
Flipper Zero recently and Mestastic seems like a fun expansion on that
interest. In the Western NY area, about a week up and running, devices
just sitting on my desk, I've got a node list of 215, and I've
communicated with people from Rochester to Canada.
itomato wrote 6 hours 51 min ago:
Meshtastic and MQTT are part of my home network
URI [1]: https://openwrt.meshtastic.org/
LelouBil wrote 7 hours 18 min ago:
I just started trying Meshtastic last month, there's nobody doing it in
my city so it's just me giving esp32s to friends to try to make a mesh,
but I'm getting into range limitations because I don't know enough
people to bridge some gaps !
I even tried changing the radio preset to Very slow Long for example,
but I didn't really get better range, I don't know why.
rta5 wrote 7 hours 40 min ago:
I started experimenting with meshtastic in December last year, but so
far it has been a really quiet network, so I'm not seeing the
congestion problems the author highlights. According to meshmap there
should be a node ~2 miles from my house but I don't reliably see it. I
don't see the next closest at 4.3 miles either. For some reason I saw
the next furthest (~8.4 miles) for a few days, but it has since
disappeared. Since Christmas I've seen 583 nodes from mine - none
reliably.
My node is a solar powered tree hanger hanging maybe 25 ft above the
ground, and I'm in southeast michigan with a typical ~30 minute commute
into the suburban cities.
I really liked this article but in the end it reinforced my belief in
meshtastic - I don't need a computer connected to my node and I'm not
paying for any meshcore features. I just wish there were more fixed
nodes out there to extend the network.
MiracleRabbit wrote 5 hours 29 min ago:
All ham radio repeater groups here dropped Meshtastic as it was
super unreliable. And they know how to build proper antennas and
filters.
Meshcore is 100% free. The last issue was the closed sorce
Android/iPhone client - but there are FOSS Flutter based-Opensource
clients available ( [1] )
URI [1]: https://github.com/zjs81/meshcore-open
brk wrote 6 hours 6 min ago:
I ran some Meshtastic nodes for a while, same overall experience.
Rarely saw nearby nodes, never communicated anything more than a
basic "HELLO"/"ACK" kind of thing.
It's a neat idea for things like a distributed sensor network on your
own property, or other IoT kinds of comms. It's not a practical
platform for human to human comms, especially in a disaster scenario.
MiracleRabbit wrote 5 hours 29 min ago:
For sensor stuff use LoRaWAN + Mirotik Basestation + Chirpstack
WhyNotHugo wrote 7 hours 13 min ago:
Meshtastic simultaneously has too few nodes for most people to see
many reliably, and has a scaling problem where too many nodes where
saturate the network.
kotaKat wrote 8 hours 54 min ago:
I'd pivot over to the MANET folks ( [1] ). The 900MHz HaLow stuff is
exciting to see on the data front for some moderate-speed data
connectivity.
(It's basically an open source version of an MPU-5, basically. [2] )
URI [1]: https://openmanet.net/
URI [2]: https://persistentsystems.com/mpu5/
moontear wrote 9 hours 25 min ago:
I really like LoRa and its range, but unfortunately the hardware is
much more expensive than e.g. Zigbee or WiFi devices.
Would love a LoRaWAN router but they run around ~80â¬/80$ and just for
playing around with it it is a bit much.
halfmatthalfcat wrote 4 hours 53 min ago:
You can build one with an SX1302/SX1250 and an STM MC for cheap.
ChrisMarshallNY wrote 9 hours 43 min ago:
Iâve looked at this stuff, because of its utility as an emergency
communication system.
Iâm not sure if any of the open standards are there yet, but that may
just be, because there isnât money to be made, so no commercial
entity has approached it (like GoTenna, which appears to be the only
successful one, but uses a proprietary protocol).
kanbankaren wrote 1 hour 42 min ago:
For emergency comms(remember, emergency services provided by the
state don't monitor the ham bands, so can't call them), a $20 ham
radio would work or just carry FRS radios.
FCC does allow use of a ham radio in a real emergency without a
license.
m4rtink wrote 10 hours 23 min ago:
One aspect of MeshCore and similar technologies I really like is that
the end user devices can directly communicate with each other
seamlessly - if you have 2 MeshCore companions nearby, they can just
send messages directly, no need for a repeater.
In comparison 2 modern smartphones with no WiFi AP or no cell coverage
can't really use any of the usual messaging (or even data transfer)
services to communicate directly. Yeah, there are some ways to connect
via bluetooth or a mobile wifi hotspot, but it all looks like very
begrudgingly added and not well supported for easy use by mainstream
mobile OS and hardware companies.
bethekidyouwant wrote 2 hours 9 min ago:
I wonder what you are suggesting cell phones should be able to do
here?
m4rtink wrote 19 min ago:
Text messages to other phones in direct range, ideally voice
calling as well, using only built in software.
Also (more) seamless direct data transfers. Eg. sending a photo to
a friend standing next to me without it going through some Cloud on
the Internet.
rcarmo wrote 12 hours 5 min ago:
Iâve spent my entire career in telco and networking and loved the
rise of Wi-Fi (which we used spectacularly over long distances when the
spectrum was clear to show off my mates in 3G/microwave backhaul), and
have been keeping up with LoRA and related stuff (got a few HelTec
boards), but all the recent meshtastic/core/etc. stuff feels a bit like
the early wardriving community (and CB radio): fun, full of ideas, but
without enough structure (or mass appeal) to take off.
I do wish we had a proper, working emergency meshing standard, though.
An international one, too.
torginus wrote 3 hours 46 min ago:
I had a friend who worked in telco as well, and he told me the reason
why IP-based networking solutions will never completely replace
earlier stuff like GSM is that the QoS algorithms used work extremely
well in practice (which mesh networks prove), their behavior is
completely nondeterministic, and tends to have really bad failure
cases in overload, or certain nodes in the network failing.
Which means in SHTF situations (such as one when most people imagine
this would be useful), these things tend to fail the most.
halfmatthalfcat wrote 4 hours 57 min ago:
LoRA can work but there needs to be a backbone, either terrestrially
via towers with repeaters or LEO constellations. Everything else is
doomed to fail.
raffael_de wrote 7 hours 47 min ago:
> but without enough structure (or mass appeal) to take off
I think the most important requirement for a mesh technology to take
off is a purpose that is practically relevant right now. Let's assume
the mesh network exists - now what? Now you can send messages to
other nerds but ... what do you even want to send as a message?
That's why ham radio basically bottomed out at contests, Morse code
challenges and exchanging specs ... there is nothing to say. Maybe
the biggest problem of mesh networks isn't technology but society. If
there is a purpose that at least serves nerds making up 0.1% of the
population then that would be amazing and mass appeal would actually
be more cause for trouble than desirable.
tardedmeme wrote 4 hours 29 min ago:
It's the same problem with things like Geminispace, or hobbyist
phone networks. The only thing Gemini users have in common is
hating what the internet has become. The only thing TandmX users
have in common is some interest in phones or phone systems.
But on the other hand, isn't it also true of the Internet?
Steltek wrote 5 hours 24 min ago:
Off-grid messaging is helpful for my family (skiing, camping,
hiking). They have zero interest in ham radio but a funny looking
messaging app isn't a problem. Regular walkies talkies (FRS, GMRS)
don't relay/hop, work asynchronously, or transmit GPS positions.
Karrot_Kream wrote 20 min ago:
Yeah this was the reasoning behind Meshtastic and it still works
very well in this usecase. Folks trying to scale these meshes run
into all sorts of issues inherent to routing over a mesh with
infrequent and unstable nodes. But for a messaging app in a
remote area it works great.
PaulHoule wrote 7 hours 21 min ago:
Yeah, nobody wants to chew the rag anymore!
tardedmeme wrote 11 hours 7 min ago:
I believe it's called ham radio
rcarmo wrote 10 hours 36 min ago:
CB stands for Citizen's Band, and was the moniker back in the
Usenet days. Yes, I know I am dating myself here.
tardedmeme wrote 4 hours 31 min ago:
Yes, and ham radio is the international emergency mesh. CB radio
isn't.
wtallis wrote 3 hours 30 min ago:
The request was for "a proper, working emergency meshing
standard". Ham radio absolutely is not that. Yes, ham radios
are used in emergency situations, but usually not as a mesh and
certainly not as a standard.
jagged-chisel wrote 2 hours 24 min ago:
âMeshâ doesnât even make sense wrt ham. Arenât hams
just people broadcasting voice with amplitude modulation? Is
there a data band? If so, are any hams willing to relay?
CalRobert wrote 8 hours 4 min ago:
My uncle definitely had a CB radio in his big rig, not ham, to
hear him describe it.
lormayna wrote 12 hours 20 min ago:
I am an happy user of Meshstastic since more than one year (I have two
active nodes and a third one is in the making). I am living in hilly
countryside and the difficult that I have experienced is about reaching
other nodes: with the standard antenna, I can barely connect with nodes
in a 500 meters range, with a better antenna (coaxial collinear is the
best IMHO) I can reach more than 10km.
I don't think the Meshstatic approach of "flooding" the network with
all the messages can be scalable in the long run, they need to
implement some sort of routing protocols (like BATMAN), but they are
heavy and complex to implement
neilalexander wrote 9 hours 41 min ago:
None of MeshCore, Meshtastic or Reticulum will scale well, especially
not on top of a heavily constrained radio technology like LoRa.
Flooding is inefficient for obvious reasons, AODV-esque routing
(which MeshCore tries to do for DMs and Reticulum tries to do in
general) is prone to almost-immediate path failure on unstable
underlying transports, and the hidden node problem always bites on
haphazard/unplanned mesh radio deployments where people show up with
nodes in random locations on the same frequency.
The cracks are already extremely visible in MeshCore in the UK, where
overheads from adverts and dropped packets from collisions mean it is
already horrendously unreliable and most of the chatter in the Public
channel is people sending test messages and being unsure whether
anything they sent was ever heard by anyone.
Most other routing protocols (BATMAN included) are also not that well
suited to situations where the underlying transport ends up
asymmetric, e.g. one node can't hear others but it can be heard, and
that's an extremely common occurrence/failure mode in wireless meshes
like this. It's a difficult problem to solve with coordination
between nodes, let alone without.
lormayna wrote 3 hours 22 min ago:
Agree!
And we need also to consider that a mesh protocol for
Meshtatic/Meshcore should support mobility and have to run in a low
power devices
ysnp wrote 3 hours 43 min ago:
Any promising mesh networks, radio networks or routing protocols
worth looking into?
PaulHoule wrote 7 hours 15 min ago:
You have two conditions: not dense enough or too dense and the
fractal nature of population mean you can have both. Radio
bandwidth is a precious resource and if you think somehow that
anything good will come out of sending a packet N times you are not
likely to manage a wireless network successfully.
There are systems like [1] But they are pretty specialized and not
that scalable
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Packet_Reporting_S...
sschueller wrote 12 hours 26 min ago:
I was the first to setup a Meshcore room server in my city. New I get
pings from all over the place and it's busy. It seems to be extremely
popular in Switzerland for some reason.
londons_explore wrote 13 hours 13 min ago:
Please someone design a worldwide mesh network. Mix of wireless and
wired links.
Like the internet, but self-configuring and peer to peer.
Yes, there are lots of technical and social challenges, but I don't
believe they are unsolvable.
bergie wrote 11 hours 25 min ago:
Isn't that exactly the idea of Reticulum?
URI [1]: http://reticulum.network/manual/whatis.html
ChrisMarshallNY wrote 9 hours 54 min ago:
The author seems to prefer Reticulum.
FabCH wrote 13 hours 35 min ago:
Am I the only one who thinks MeshCore shouldnât be called âoff
gridâ?
Unlike Meshtastic and Reticulum, the need for router nodes is built
into the protocol itself in MeshCore. And while nodes are cheap and
amateurs can put them up, that is still a grid that has to exist for
your MeshCore client to be usefulâ¦
Doman wrote 9 hours 49 min ago:
You totally can use Meshcore without repeater, and companions can be
used like routers. This functionality can be enabled any time using
one checkbox in app. It switches the radios to slightly different
frequency and enables repeat mode in personal nodes, this gives you
one small network. No repeater needed. And in this mode you don't
clutter "main" mesh with your local mesh.
The main difference between Meshcore and Meshtastic is how telemetry
is handled. In Meshcore to get telemetry the other party needs to
request it, whereas in Meshtastic telemetry is sent in flood mode in
configured intervals. That's why Meshtastic is better suited for
(A)TAK [1]. But because Meshtastic sends telemetry anyway there is
less and less airtime for chat messages, and it gets to the point
where you can't talk to people. For small groups this is fine, for
bigger groups/meshes this is no bueno. [1] - (A) stands for Android
app.
URI [1]: https://tak.gov/
FabCH wrote 9 hours 27 min ago:
âmainâ mesh IS âthe gridâ
If I have to modify settings and effectively kick myself off the
mesh, then it doesnât matter which protocol I use. By the same
logic, you can just choose different settings on Meshtastic and get
the same results, but you will not have anyone to mesh with.
kstrauser wrote 12 hours 57 min ago:
No, you're not alone. MeshCore is very neat tech, but I love that you
can show up to, say, a music fest with a few Meshtastic radios and
voila, instant mesh. To me, it feels more in the spirit of the thing.
That's purely subjective, but that's how I see it.
dyauspitr wrote 14 hours 17 min ago:
I got into it too back in 2012. Frankly itâs not a very interesting
space unless youâre trying to circumvent nation wide internet
shutdowns because for everything else encrypted chat channels serve the
same purpose and everyone is doing it (WhatsApp, signal, telegram etc)
cynicalsecurity wrote 7 hours 41 min ago:
I have some really bad news for you, mate.
dyauspitr wrote 2 hours 36 min ago:
What is it?
smlacy wrote 15 hours 40 min ago:
IMHO this article misses a couple really important points.
First, if the mesh can use Internet or other transports then it will,
and it will be built out in a way where these become a necessity. If
all you want is a silly new way to text your friends, then something
like reticulum will be ok. But if you want a serious solution for
emergency response and free communication -- free as in "no one can
stop me or control what is said no matter what" then building something
independent from scratch is critically important.
Second, the author also misses an important piece of functionality of
meshcore: If I lose power, the mesh still works.
This is hugely important for emergency preparedness and disaster
recovery. Especially in places prone to any form of natural disaster.
It's certainly the early days, and it's clear that there's a long way
to go, but I really feel that these fully decentralized solar powered
networks are hugely important as a simple alternative to the corporate
behemoth the internet has become.
brk wrote 8 hours 25 min ago:
The meshcore software, and the common hardware being used, are both
comically weak for anything that approaches usage at scale,
especially in an emergency situation.
The range is extremely limited, and the throughput gets really bad if
your packets have to travel more than a few hops. These two factors
alone combine to write this off as nothing more than a toy pretty
much from the start.
There are already unlicensed radios with longer range that would be a
better starting point if people were trying to position mesh* as a
scalable and reliable transport of any kind.
>Second, the author also misses an important piece of functionality
of meshcore: If I lose power, the mesh still works.
This point isn't unique to meshcore, and it is not a guarantee. Any
solar powered and battery-backed device can function without utility
power (in theory). Meshcore nodes are not solar powered by default,
and the same solar power concept can be utilized for any other kind
of radio transceiver/protocol.
ramses0 wrote 3 hours 52 min ago:
Huge +1 here! Work out scenario planning of Meshtastic/Meshcore
with one of the GPT's and they top out at like ~100k users and like
10msg/sec or something ludicrously low.
At something like $100/node and 5000 nodes in a major metro (eg:
Dallas) it's like a $500k investment and you're maxed out at low
data rates and saturated topology.
That's 5k nodes in a (generous) 5 million population and ~500
square mile area. More like 9M people and 9000 square miles. (I
checked, and that's "extended metroplex", but reasonable: Decatur
to Cleburne, Weatherford to Kaufman).
At 5k nodes saturating an area, it's basically a rich persons toy
very well suitable to remote or low-density areas, but NEVER for
1:1 saturation deployment in any sort of high density area.
MomsAVoxell wrote 4 hours 41 min ago:
Well, someone is a negative nelly.
>comically weak
This has been said about every interchange technology, ever.
Doesnât matter, still EOFâed.
>trying to position mesh* as a scalable and reliable transport of
any kind.
.. well, scale is a matter of one thing: location, location,
location ...
>range
.. is an end-user value decision, as in, you might think its too
slow for your browsing needs, but there are a thousand applications
that will use the bandwidth offered to the average user, at the
average users own personal speed, according to the needs of the
average user.
Just like in the good olâ days of soggy noodle internetworking,
the current zeitgeist apropos mesh-based local low-power radio
technology, is entirely ruled by the user.
Case in point: some friends and I have deployed our own small
Meshtastic network, and we use it exclusively to organize our
social network. This particular use case isnât particularly
âeasilyâ exploitable by third parties, since we have some
modicum of encryption - but it certainly supports our need here and
now in a big city - but, more importantly some of us will take the
little lovely boxes with them when they go sailing next week, and
our range will be significantly extended for the purpose â¦
>Meshcore nodes are not solar powered by default, and the same
solar power concept can be utilized for any other kind of radio
transceiver/protocol.
If you need solar, build a meshcore node with solar.
Nay-saying like this is as old as the hills, thereâs nothing
special about it, everyone does itâ¦
philipallstar wrote 9 hours 28 min ago:
> but I really feel that these fully decentralized solar powered
networks are hugely important as a simple alternative to the
corporate behemoth the internet has become.
Is the internet that? People have built corporate behemoths on top of
it, in world wide web-land, but the internet itself seems relatively
neutral.
NooneAtAll3 wrote 1 hour 36 min ago:
> Is the internet that?
are you asking about the current state or the abstract idea?
because current state is discussed in TFA and it's centralized up
to needing yearly fee to receive BGP data
neutrality only exists if you actively go for it - and the whole
post is about such solutions
pezgrande wrote 9 hours 3 min ago:
A swarm of millions of devices (that can be solar powered) could be
more resilient than the "few" nodes that the "internet"
architecture has. I guess that is the motivation, in theory.
Internet is not neutral, and hasn't been for too long, many
providers offering free Whatsapp or cases like LaLiga.
embedding-shape wrote 8 hours 51 min ago:
> Internet is not neutral, and hasn't been for too long, many
providers offering free Whatsapp or cases like LaLiga.
Not sure why people are so hyper-focused on the La Liga case in
Spain, Spain done so much worse censorship, even political one,
yet no one seemingly bats an eye. But some IPs getting blocks
because Cloudflare doesn't follow Spanish law? Suddenly half of
HN cares about it, it makes no sense...
How about when a Women's rights website started being blocked in
Spain? ( [1] ) How about the Gag Law that existed since 2015,
limiting public demonstrations? How about when the central
government prevented an "autonomous" region from even thinking
about having a referendum? How about the laws against "insulting"
the crown?
Today, in 2026, as a Spanish resident, I still can't access [2] .
Why? Who knows anymore. Fucking money + religion owns our digital
spaces now, been for a long time, no one seemingly noticed.
There has been so much censorship here, so much more important
censorship than some random piracy stream websites going offline,
yet not a single person here seems to remember those more
important cases, just as long as a US company involved, then
suddenly it's important and worth referencing.
Freedom on the world wide web and the public internet been kind
of hanging by a thread for multiple decades at this point, and
I'm also on the side of "We need new physical infrastructure if
we're gonna have a chance".
Meshtastic, Guifi, Freifunk, NYCMesh and more are wonderful
efforts that hopefully at one point can group together, we all
have more or less the same ideas and same goals, right now it's
all separate networks though.
URI [1]: https://digitalfreedomfund.org/case-studies/womens-right...
URI [2]: https://www.womenonweb.org/
pimterry wrote 8 hours 7 min ago:
> Today, in 2026, as a Spanish resident, I still can't access
[1] . Why? Who knows anymore. Fucking money + religion owns our
digital spaces now, been for a long time, no one seemingly
noticed.
I didn't know about this, so I looked it up: it's because they
sell prescription-only abortion medication and ship directly to
consumers, where it's legally only available via prescription
and medical oversight. Fundamentally they're blocked for
ignoring medical regulations. There were some appeals, but the
argument is that access to abortion medication is already a
well-protected right, so that this is dangerous and
unnecessary, and it's not possible to block that while
unblocking the rest of their educational resources.
URI [1]: https://www.womenonweb.org/
embedding-shape wrote 7 hours 50 min ago:
Such a bullshit reason though, the real reason is that the
church don't like women deciding over their own bodies, and
the church wields real political power in Spain.
Using a VPN, and trying to use that website to "order
abortion pills" today to Spain shows this error:
> You live in a country where there is access to safe
abortion services. We don't provide services in your country
and we therefore are unable to assist you.
You haven't been able to get abortion pills from them for
years, yet the same reason for the block remains, even if
that's not actually true in practice.
The block is being escalated to UN though, so it's still an
ongoing issue, not like nothing is happening, just
frustrating to see people complaining about minor censorship
when there is so much more important censorship happening all
the time.
worldsayshi wrote 10 hours 41 min ago:
> no one can stop me or control what is said no matter what
Can't they just triangulate the nodes and hack or unplug them? And
put whoever objects into prison?
mytailorisrich wrote 10 hours 17 min ago:
Meshtastic/core are very easy to disrupt or jam, anyway.
Thomashuet wrote 11 hours 13 min ago:
> the author also misses an important piece of functionality of
meshcore: If I lose power, the mesh still works.
Isn't it the case with Meshtastic and Reticulum too? It feels like it
should be part of the definition of mesh network.
transitivebs wrote 16 hours 17 min ago:
[1] is the official mirror for reticulum
URI [1]: https://github.com/markqvist/reticulum
moebrowne wrote 11 hours 46 min ago:
Official manual including install instructions:
URI [1]: https://markqvist.github.io/Reticulum/manual/
mycall wrote 17 hours 5 min ago:
Does 802.11p work in any of these mesh networks? It could amplify
their usefulness.
Panda_ wrote 12 hours 26 min ago:
Reticulum would probably be the best one for it. As far as I can tell
there aren't any interfaces for it already, but if you can get a
command that transfers data using stdin and sdtout, Reticulum has
things like the PipeInterface
URI [1]: https://reticulum.network/manual/interfaces.html
transcriptase wrote 18 hours 12 min ago:
Every time I get excited about one of these techs I end up finding it
has approx the same range as a late 90s cordless phone unless you live
on the Nevada salt flats, and a data rate that could probably be beat
out by Morse code on a GMRS radio. Sadly I live in the opposite of that
terrain with approx the same population density.
Regardless I have a few LILYGO Meshtastic Esp32 boards that are neat to
play around with!
m4rtink wrote 10 hours 33 min ago:
I have a very different experience - here in Europe with 868 MHz
MeshCore you get good singnal from a repeater through one or two city
blocks with non ideal antenna placement.
With reasonable line of sight tens of kilometers & much more is
doable. There are some repeaters on mountains that connect bigger
regional meshes with packets going >100 km regularly.
URI [1]: https://mapa.meshcore.cz/
dclaw wrote 14 hours 39 min ago:
WCMesh in California covers a few hundred miles of southern
California on Meshcore.... That isn't flat. It really just depends on
buy-in in the local region.
mikeweiss wrote 15 hours 1 min ago:
Uhhhh ... No. You must have read that it uses the same frequency
900mhz, but did you actually try using it? When I first got on
meshcore here NJ i immediately connected with my closest neighbor
repeater 20 miles away which then in turn connected me to the local
NJ/PA mesh which spans almost 200 miles wide. I don't recall any
cordless telephone ever doing that...
ews wrote 17 hours 24 min ago:
it works incredibly well at Burning Man, so you are completely right!
willis936 wrote 17 hours 41 min ago:
I mean morse code on GMRS is actually an amazingly strong physics
solution. Take the benefits of VHF propagation and combine it with
high power limits and a coding scheme that is on par with FT8 for
noisy channel resilience. No way a potato powered microwave is going
to compete.
915 MHz mesh isn't a fair comparison. APRS is, but that requires
licensing and unencrypted communication, so it gets less traffic.
Quite good and fun though. I get point to point pings dozens of
miles away daily.
robotswantdata wrote 18 hours 29 min ago:
Set up solar nodes last weekend. 200 miles of range now. Nerds, mad
ideas. Good times.
bethekidyouwant wrote 2 hours 7 min ago:
And when the temperature drops below zero?
johntash wrote 12 hours 16 min ago:
Did you set up solar nodes in random spots or only areas you
own/control?
I've wondered if it'd be legal to just chuck a couple into some
random trees.
mikestorrent wrote 14 hours 58 min ago:
Not having great luck with my solar node. Nothing ever seems to get
out, even with a pretty nice antenna...
robotswantdata wrote 13 hours 28 min ago:
Wrong antenna for the frequency?
giwook wrote 18 hours 3 min ago:
What do you need 200 miles of range for?
PaulHoule wrote 4 hours 14 min ago:
Personally I find it very satisfying to get long near-line-of-site
performance in VHF and up. That could be reaching a repeater 100+
miles away on two meters with a handheld and a tape measure yagi
[1] or talking to somebody with a bigger station 300+ miles away
because of a tropospheric duct or just getting into the WiFi at the
hospital from the other side of the lake.
URI [1]: https://www.jpole-antenna.com/2017/02/07/build-it-2-meter-...
m4rtink wrote 13 min ago:
While the local Czech MeshCore network is heavily supported by a
couple repeaters on higher hills and mountains to connect the
meshes around metropolitan centers, ideally it should be much
more distributed and less dependent on such a few important
nodes.
Basically a lot more repeaters & more hops to reach longer
distances.
This also helps with scaling as more messages can be routed local
only via MeshCore region support scoping, effectively using the
available bandwidth on many places for different purposes at the
same time.
robotswantdata wrote 13 hours 26 min ago:
Zombies
swaits wrote 17 hours 54 min ago:
RTO
NooneAtAll3 wrote 17 hours 11 min ago:
what does that stand for?
spacebacon wrote 7 hours 56 min ago:
Round Trip Orbit
1e1a wrote 8 hours 1 min ago:
Radio Transmission Optimization
RetroTechie wrote 8 hours 30 min ago:
Reach The Others
at-fates-hands wrote 13 hours 57 min ago:
Racing Towards Oblivion
ux266478 wrote 14 hours 11 min ago:
Restarting The Oracle
giwook wrote 15 hours 7 min ago:
Race The Otter
qsxfthnkp2322 wrote 15 hours 49 min ago:
Reno To Oakland
steve_adams_86 wrote 16 hours 17 min ago:
Return To Office
thejazzman wrote 16 hours 32 min ago:
Reading The Onion
ericrosedev wrote 18 hours 55 min ago:
After seeing the Gemini, Gophers, and Fingers post today [1] I wonder
if they would pair well with Reticulum
URI [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48297467
bergie wrote 15 hours 6 min ago:
A lot of the "early internet" protocols would likely pair quite well,
especially ones based on UDP.
However, Reticulum has its own active "small web" implementation with
NomadNet and the Micron markup.
Karrot_Kream wrote 18 hours 43 min ago:
These ideas yes, but these networks already have a concept of message
oriented semantics and so there's not much of a need to rebuild most
of those protocols. A lot of what Finger, Gopher, et al does is
define the application layer semantics to transmit documents over
stream oriented protocols.
raffael_de wrote 19 hours 44 min ago:
This has been on here a couple of times the past few days or weeks.
Finally pulled the trigger and bought a Seeed Studio Wio Tracker L1 Pro
for MeshCore. I find the idea of a para-internet just fast enough for
text based monomedia content highly appealing. Probably a mix of
nostalgia but also realism - my thinking is that a network too slow for
pictures / audio / video would elegantly avoid problems like spam and
(illegal) pornography by design.
brk wrote 5 hours 57 min ago:
The issue is that these mesh protocols quickly break down under any
real loads.
Setting up a few mesh nodes, running some tests, and thinking you
have a kit that is usable in an emergency is like so many other
"disaster recovery" drills we've been through that assume ideal
conditions. The excellent daily tape backups that you realize too
late you can't utilize in a bare metal recovery situation because
nobody kept an OS install media handy, or they forgot to keep the
installer and license keys for the backup software in the datacenter.
The challenge with these mesh systems is that few, if any, areas have
even gotten to a point that they could run a realistic simulation of
relying on this system for communications.
RRRA wrote 16 hours 28 min ago:
In Montréal we've rebooted Réseau Libre which used to be a Wi-Fi
mesh experiment 15+ years ago.
It's a fun experiment, but in a way feels like a step backward for
me.
Meshtastic and Meshcore are just that, messaging, but that makes it
the standardized killer app.
On the other side you have reticulum which allows decoupling from the
LoRa low bandwidth only radios, seems to do a lot of neat stuff, but
if we're reinventing a whole network layer, we're going to have to
reinvent services, discovery, etc. and I fear we're wasting time when
in the end what wins is controlling the backbone bandwidth, but with
the added difficulty of a p2p mesh.
I'm starting to feel this is a fun activity, but realistically copium
for a world that is very sadly centralizing everything.
raffael_de wrote 10 hours 25 min ago:
I have difficulty following you.
> a Wi-Fi mesh experiment 15+ years ago. It's a fun experiment, but
in a way feels like a step backward for me.
Why? WiFi technology is cheap and available. Seems like a great
basis for a mesh.
> Meshtastic and Meshcore are just that, messaging, but that makes
it the standardized killer app.
Why "just"? All the internet protocols are also just messaging at
the end of the day - request: A sends message to B, response: B
sends message to A.
> On the other side you have reticulum which allows decoupling from
the LoRa low bandwidth only radios, seems to do a lot of neat stuff
I'm not familiar with Reticulum (neither with Mesh* in any
meaningful way) - do you mean to say that Reticulum is more
flexible regarding the radio technology - as in: no need to by
specific devices like for Meshcore?
> I'm starting to feel this is a fun activity, but realistically
copium for a world that is very sadly centralizing everything.
Can't say I disagree, sadly.
RRRA wrote 1 hour 38 min ago:
Oh yes, Wi-Fi was cheap, but before HaLow we ended giving up
because we couldn't get a meaningful density for the network to
get far enough across town to start to be remotely useful, even
with 10-15dBi antennas mounted outside.
About the messaging aspect, I mean that though a messaging app is
great, I feel that the end goal is having an independent network
from the telcos, carriers, etc. In that sense we're going to need
to allow more than an SMS replacement.
And from there is born the problem. Bootstraping such a network
for more than geeks is relatively impossible in that context. You
either have a device that does one thing as a drop-in magic
solution for newcomers to jump on, or you chase the better
solution, but that brings as much complexity, if not more, as
running the Internet...
And while I'm happy to see p2p and mesh research continuing,
participate when I can, I just feel like it's a pipe dream that
is far far away and I'd like to see it grow beyond the few dozens
of decentralization geeks in every city :)
jauntywundrkind wrote 19 hours 51 min ago:
In general I'm happy the longer range options are about, but I'd much
rather see IP based ad-hoc communication. Wifi 802.11ah "halow" is such
a more versatile structure than these limited networks.
More of everything, of course! But I'm far more interested in making
the wifi we have more ad-hoc capable, more useful anywhere any time,
for whatever, especially on the longer range bands like 900MHz.
bergie wrote 15 hours 3 min ago:
I think there are people playing with Halow with Reticulum. That's
one advantage of having a multi-transport system. There is also a
Bluetooth transport now:
URI [1]: https://salemdata.net/johnpress/?p=720
Karrot_Kream wrote 18 hours 41 min ago:
Do you know what the MSS is on a Halow network? Curious if it makes
sense to run usual TCP and UDP based applications on them or whether
we would need to switch to things like CoAP.
neilalexander wrote 8 hours 42 min ago:
HaLow is just Wi-Fi on sub-1GHz frequencies and narrower channels.
You get normal MTUs and TCP & UDP work just fine.
Groxx wrote 20 hours 18 min ago:
>To be perfectly upfront with you, this post will be glossing over many
Meshtastic and MeshCore features, because I feel they are both
non-serious solutions compared to Reticulum for reasons I will explain
later on in this post.
Yeah, that's the general feel I get every time I poke into Mesh*. Neat
radio tech, fun toy to find other nearby nerds, instantly-obvious
problems that are fatal to growing beyond being that toy (or small
specialized personal nets, where it's totally fine). They feel more
like a tech demo than anything actually intended to survive.
Which is fine, you kinda need that to start out, and they do work
today. Just... hard to get excited about.
torginus wrote 3 hours 43 min ago:
I think meshes do work extremely well in practice, and are quite
resilient with regards to errors, and load balancing, and they get
better as you add more nodes.
I think it's perfectly feasible for a small neighborhood of regular
people to have internet shared over a wireless mesh network, yielding
experience comparable to standard approaches.
Karrot_Kream wrote 18 min ago:
They don't. Resilience isn't additive. The more nodes you add, the
more announcements and traffic you add, which congests the network
further. Regular internet topologies work because of high
throughput backbones.
bergie wrote 11 hours 23 min ago:
I'm right now anchored at an atoll in the Tuamotus, French Polynesia.
3/10 boats anchored here have Meshtastic.
throwawaycan wrote 15 hours 28 min ago:
On the mesh in Toronto with meshcore we have regular communication
that reach all the way to Buffalo. We are past the « toy » stage,
itâs truly impressive.
Groxx wrote 14 hours 42 min ago:
Meshcore seems a lot better thought out in that respect, yea.
Flood routing is a very-well-known dead-end.
Karrot_Kream wrote 12 hours 43 min ago:
Meshtastic was never designed to be a wide mesh, it was
originally meant for personal networks.
mikestorrent wrote 14 hours 57 min ago:
The Salish Mesh over here on the west coast also gets some pretty
good range, though there are lots of holes in the network
alnwlsn wrote 16 hours 3 min ago:
It's pretty hard to imagine anyone "getting serious" with these tiny
radios designed for reading gas meters and weather stations and using
that to build some kind of off-grid alternate Internet.
I'd almost have more faith on dragging out all the old acoustic
coupler modems and building a city-wide string-and-tin-can telephone
network.
Of course they are not useless. My hiking/camping friends put
together a fun orienteering game which used Meshtastic to do live GPS
tracking. Worked great for that. But a country spanning meshternet it
is not.
I don't think it needs to be though. There are plenty of things to
explore using these things at the local 1-10 km scale.
To be fair it is already a miracle that there is enough Metastatic in
my area that I can (sometimes/rarely) send a message between my home
and work!
*disclaimer that I am coming off a recent disillusionment with
Meshtastic. I thought it would be fun to make a single raspberry pi
image with all the dev tools on it to do some off-grid
dev/maintenance work if you were to treat this seriously and pretend
the main internet is down. That moment came when I tried to compile
something and the Pi ran out of memory. Really? I need more than 1GB
RAM to compile something used to send short text messages?! That's
nuts!
sehugg wrote 8 hours 36 min ago:
I tried to compile something and the Pi ran out of memory
I think your beef is not with Meshtastic, but with the
distro/compiler, and I am going to bet you're compiling C++ with
clang.
alnwlsn wrote 5 hours 11 min ago:
I don't know man, I was just trying to follow the official build
instructions. If that's not Meshtastic I don't know what is.
The (lack of) reliability in the network is the main issue with
it though, but that's already been covered elsewhere in this
thread.
robotswantdata wrote 18 hours 32 min ago:
This is by design. Itâs like BBS again
Joel_Mckay wrote 18 hours 26 min ago:
Amateur Ham technicians were doing packet radio long before (AX.25)
the Internet made it into homes. =3
URI [1]: https://aprs.world/
Karrot_Kream wrote 18 hours 46 min ago:
The inherent limitations of free spectrum mesh technologies will
never lend itself to a replacement for the Internet so will always
largely exist in niches. Niches like personal nets, local nerd
networks, or emergency response (tho actual first responders are not
the most eager to try this stuff based on my experiences in the
community.) All of this can be a feature or a bug depending on whom
you ask.
mingus88 wrote 19 hours 58 min ago:
That weakness is a strength.
Everyone you meet on a mesh is a real breathing nerd, who due to
proximity has a lot in common with you. They are not trying to
influence you or sell you anything
How many places like that are left?
mschuster91 wrote 18 hours 5 min ago:
> Everyone you meet on a mesh is a real breathing nerd, who due to
proximity has a lot in common with you. They are not trying to
influence you or sell you anything
I wish... the Hamburg Meshcore mesh has some dumbass spammer
spamming far-right youtube videos in the public channel for
example. And from what I hear, Meshtastic also has issues with this
kind of idiots.
hylaride wrote 5 hours 44 min ago:
I run a few Meshcore nodes in Toronto - mostly as a nerd hobby.
In some ways it has the feel of the 1990s internet and in some
ways it's the same feel as ham radio . It has smart nerds, but
also some unhinged people who are desperate to force people to
hear them. Then there are the trolls...
bityard wrote 15 hours 21 min ago:
Start spamming far-left YouTube videos to the public channel at
the same time, according to the general theory of nutball
political physics the two should cancel each other out
mschuster91 wrote 3 hours 0 min ago:
The problem is that takes up valuable airtime. The denser the
mesh the more airtime is wasted on the junk.
m4rtink wrote 4 min ago:
In MeshCore a concept of regions has been recently introduced
- you can scope channels and messages to a specific
geographic region (which is set on a repeater) and it will
not propagate outside of the given region.
That way local channels don't need to flood the whole mesh,
same as with trying to send a message to someone or reach the
management interface of a repeater you know is in a given
area.
Schiendelman wrote 15 hours 30 min ago:
All unmoderated spaces have this problem. That's why the right
wing grew so much on gaming forums, because they were extremely
unmoderated.
A great video on the topic from a few years ago (How to
Radicalize a Normie):
URI [1]: https://youtu.be/P55t6eryY3g
Groxx wrote 19 hours 2 min ago:
It's well suited for that at the moment, yeah - if that's what
you're hoping to find by getting into it, it's pretty cheap and
now's a great time.
Panda_ wrote 23 hours 7 min ago:
Saw this at [1] and thought it was interesting
URI [1]: https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/im-getting-into-mesh-netwo...
DIR <- back to front page