Meshtastic up close: how a message hops through other people's nodes
· 20 min read
Meshtastic is not a stack or a platform but a finished product: a cheap board with a LoRa radio, a phone over Bluetooth — and a chat that works where there is neither mobile coverage nor internet. This note is about how exactly a message hops through other people's nodes, how much airtime that costs and why a mesh chokes when there are too many nodes. The radio physics underneath is in the LoRa deep dive.
237 bytesThe payload ceiling in one packet. Anything longer is cut or does not go
16 bytesThe whole header: to whom, from whom, packet number, flags, channel
3 / 7How many relays are allowed by default and at most
1.07 kbit/sThe speed of the LongFast preset — the one almost the whole world runs on