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Meshtastic: An open source, off-grid, decentralized, mesh network

meshtastic.org

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Re: Meshtastic: An open source, off-grid, decentralized, mesh network

#21

Post by datadeft »

walrus01 wrote: post #3

Before anyone gets too excited about this - half duplex/TDD-like mesh radio systems with omnidirectional antennas are one of the LEAST efficient possible ways of building a wireless village/town scale IP network. The thing about an omni antenna talking to another omni is that an omnidirectional antenna is also a 360 degree noise gatherer, and gathers traffic/timeslot occuyping stuff that might be coming from other, s…

I think your comment is based on something that LoRa is not.

> building a wireless village/town scale IP network

This was never its goal. You can build a simple messaging network for text that has a pretty good range and low bandwidth. That is all.

Re: Meshtastic: An open source, off-grid, decentralized, mesh network

#22

Post by datadeft »

Hugsun wrote: post #17

Has anyone deployed and used a system like this here? If so, what was its purpose and why this technology over others?

Yes. We use it to have a backup communication channel when all other networks are down. This is an extremely unlikely scenario. If that happens wireless communication is going to be the least of the problems.

Re: Meshtastic: An open source, off-grid, decentralized, mesh network

#23

Post by geraldhh »

dreamer7 wrote: post #7

Is it feasible to create a mesh network using Bluetooth on participating smart phones? In crowded places like college campuses, we could run campus IM on it for instance

the 'find my shit' networks deployed within the gog and apl ecosystems can be used to piggyback on for low-bw off-grid communication

Re: Meshtastic: An open source, off-grid, decentralized, mesh network

#25

Post by tecleandor »

myself248 wrote: post #11
VikingCoder wrote: post #8

Isn't there an open source Android mesh network? Based on Wifi or Bluetooth? I thought I heard about mesh networks being used in protests years ago...? Do we still not have something viable?

I've heard of Briar and Bridgeify and Serval and Meshenger, what others are there?

There is LibreMesh. There are other distros using OLSR and/or B.A.T.M.A.N. routing too.

Check https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/mesh/start

Re: Meshtastic: An open source, off-grid, decentralized, mesh network

#26

Post by goodpoint »

VikingCoder wrote: post #8

Isn't there an open source Android mesh network? Based on Wifi or Bluetooth? I thought I heard about mesh networks being used in protests years ago...? Do we still not have something viable?

Briar for sure, but Android is hostile to mesh networking (unsurprisingly).

Re: Meshtastic: An open source, off-grid, decentralized, mesh network

#27

Post by goodpoint »

moffkalast wrote: post #24

Never ask a woman her age, a man his salary, and a LoRA transceiver what its throughput rate is. At double digit bits per second, it has to be like a few characters per second at best or even less with packet headers, error correction, etc.

> Never ask a woman her age, a man his salary

Wee bit sexist...

EDIT: Yes I know it's a proverb, I'm not blaming the parent post.

EDIT: 4 downvotes? Nice.

Re: Meshtastic: An open source, off-grid, decentralized, mesh network

#28

Post by Cort3z »

goodpoint wrote: post #27
moffkalast wrote: post #24

Never ask a woman her age, a man his salary, and a LoRA transceiver what its throughput rate is. At double digit bits per second, it has to be like a few characters per second at best or even less with packet headers, error correction, etc.

> Never ask a woman her age, a man his salary Wee bit sexist... EDIT: Yes I know it's a proverb, I'm not blaming the parent post. EDIT: 4 downvotes? Nice.

It’s a saying

Re: Meshtastic: An open source, off-grid, decentralized, mesh network

#29

Post by hammyhavoc »

geraldhh wrote: post #23
dreamer7 wrote: post #7

Is it feasible to create a mesh network using Bluetooth on participating smart phones? In crowded places like college campuses, we could run campus IM on it for instance

the 'find my shit' networks deployed within the gog and apl ecosystems can be used to piggyback on for low-bw off-grid communication

Interesting! Any further reading you would recommend on this?

Re: Meshtastic: An open source, off-grid, decentralized, mesh network

#30

Post by neilalexander »

ThatPlayer wrote: post #13
dreamer7 wrote: post #7

Is it feasible to create a mesh network using Bluetooth on participating smart phones? In crowded places like college campuses, we could run campus IM on it for instance

I think any wireless mesh like this runs into issues with scaling because you cannot efficiently route messages between a bunch of moving nodes as the network topology is always changing. You have to use a flood network, which is also what Meshtastic does [0]. Flood networking wastes bandwidth with every node repeating itself, and it gets even worse with wireless that's a shared spectrum. All these mesh networks have…

There are more state-of-the-art routing protocols working to solve this problem for mesh networks. A couple examples of projects I have been involved in:

https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/ https://github.com/matrix-org/pinecone

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