Cross State Communication
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.
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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.
It's theoretically possible under ideal conditions but probably not practical.
There is a maximum hop count of 7 which means there can be, at absolute maximum, seven nodes between the sender and recipient. The default, though, is 3 hops.
While the radios may, in theory, be able to work at the range of "a few states over" as the crow flies, terrain, structures, and line of sight would likely prohibit them from working in practice at such distances. You'd also need a reliable series of hops to reach from you to them. Again, at those distances, you'd very likely exceed the maximum hop count pretty quickly.
From what I've seen, large meshes are generally regional.
There's a way to join meshes over the internet via MQTT but I haven't messed with setting that up and in some cases it can potentially overwhelm a local mesh.
Thanks. What I thought after reading the docs a bit. I'll look at some more options. I'm looking for a solution that doesn't rely on internet or other infrastructure likely to be targeted in an attack. Likely what I'm looking for does not exist or is not built out near me.
HAM radio is about it for long comms that aren't dependent on other systems.
Even then it takes technical skill on both ends to make that work.
You could try something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZxR-qtGH7c
That was fascinating. Thanks! Ive been thinking of getting my ham license. Might push me to get one.
Theres also Meshcore. Same devices, smaller user group, but hasany more hops. In theory messages can go further but its.so less adhoc.
Because of a recent update, favorited router nodes can act as a single hop, which would theoretically increase the amount of nodes that could be traversed before that 7-hop count was reached, but this still probably wouldn't work out for OP.
Meshcore in Australia is taking off and recently made the first Victoria - Tasmania link. Long distance comms are viable within state with many hops - if you are within range of a repeater hooked into the existing network is possible to go hundreds of kilometres quite easily. We have people participating in synchronous conversations that are occurring over a dozen hops from regional to inner urban anew back again. Yes messages do sometimes get lost but people are creating tools to troubleshoot and track. It's genuinely doing what I had originally hoped Meshtastic would, but could never get messages far enough due to hop limits and telemetry cruft.
As the previous responder said, the mesh itself is unlikely to reach that far. MQTT can bridge larger gaps like that, but it depends on the internet. At that point, it probably makes more sense to just use conventional internet methods to communicate.
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.
Ive seen some people theoretically do it with meshcore with a lot of repeaters, but the amount of hops was crazy. Its just not practical unless you get into ham or something.