I'm Getting Into Mesh Networks... (Meshtastic, MeshCore, and Reticulum)

Sign in<br>Subscribe

I love networking, a lot. So much so that I've run my own ISP since 2024, complete with its own ASN, IPv4/6 address space, fiber optics, etc.<br>However, do this and you quickly realize how reliant you still remain on central service providers. The internet is a mesh, but the real players on that mesh are few, far between, and easy to coerce into censorship and other bad things. Even after ascending to the lofty realms of direct BGP peering myself, my access to those resources is locked behind yearly fees from ARIN. Ownership of the "real estate" of the internet, IP addresses, no longer exists.<br>The tragedy of modern computing is that the local compute we own in our offices, on our laps, or in the palm of our hands is massively, massively powerful, but Big Tech companies actively refuse to take advantage of that fact. Why are you, I, and our neighbors largely relegated to consuming access from big players when the computers we have are capable of so much more?<br>Mesh networking, sending packets of data through many directly interconnected peers instead of through central datacenters, promises to free us from our reliance on central service providers, and it's something I've been really excited about lately.<br>Of course, there is good reason for how the internet is currently designed. High bandwidth connections are costly, and for some applications lowering latency as much as possible is very important, which realistically requires continent- and ocean-spanning fiber optics with as few middle-men as possible.<br>This doesn't mean we need to put all our eggs in this basket though. While bandwidth-intensive services like Netflix or latency-sensitive services like gaming are not likely to come to mesh networks anytime soon, there are a vast number of applications which are perfectly suited to mesh networking:<br>Messaging, social networking, and general information sharing are very practical uses for mesh networking where access, censorship resistance, and resiliency are increasingly critical for many people around the world.<br>For applications like this, we don't need to trench fiber connections through the ground to get everyone connected. In the modern mesh networking space, much of the innovation is happening in the LoRa radio space.<br>LoRa radios use license-free, sub-gigahertz radio bands that are available for public use in nearly all countries around the world. Compared to the license-free 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz radio you'd recognize from Wi-Fi (but is also used by many other technologies), LoRa operates at much lower power and, importantly and simultaneously, at much longer range.<br>Mesh networking over the airwaves presents a very unique opportunity for our societies. We could build a resilient, peer-to-peer network that coexists with the internet, enabling connectivity in currently underserved regions and increasing our personal sovereignty online by maintaining a functional backup to the internet for our most critical needs.<br>It's also just a freeing feeling to be able to send a message to someone else relying only on devices that you and people in your network own outright, instead of renting the capability to do so from your local ISP or Elon Musk's Starlink.<br>Meshtastic<br>The obvious frontrunner in the mesh networking space is Meshtastic, mostly because they were the first in the consumer LoRa mesh space, or at the very least the first to do it pretty well.<br>It's easy to see why Meshtastic has quite a bit of popularity: it's a real product designed with a specific use-case in mind (mobile messaging and device tracking, primarily), not a technical project just trying to build a network and hoping the use-case comes later.<br>This is very appealing for most people who just want something they can buy and use out of the box, like a set of walkie-talkies from Wal-Mart. Unfortunately, much like those cheap walkie-talkies in comparison to more serious technology like amateur radio, Meshtastic's core design holds the platform back from achieving its full potential.<br>Meshtastic's first-mover advantage is pretty hard to overcome, especially when it already works reasonably well for small, private groups like hikers or event-goers.<br>For a very large and public mesh, however, it's become clear to most people that Meshtastic by design is a fairly untenable solution. Some public mesh groups have increased the bandwidth available to Meshtastic by giving up some range, but it's a stop-gap solution that doesn't fix the problems Meshtastic has in this environment at the end of the day.<br>💡<br>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. I can almost guarantee I have been running Meshtastic and MeshCore for longer and with more infrastructure than you, and in fact I still do,...