Network Planning
Coverage planning, node placement, hop budgets, and building a reliable community mesh.
📖 Start Here — Network Planning Guide
This book is for people designing and managing community mesh networks - coverage planning, RF pr...
Coverage Planning Tools
Coverage Planning Tools Overview
Coverage Planning Tools Overview Before deploying hardware, use these tools to estimate coverage,...
MeshMapper Wardriving Guide
MeshMapper Wardriving Guide MeshMapper is a platform for mapping actual measured RF coverage of a...
Meshtastic Range Testing Guide
Overview Systematic range testing goes beyond "does it connect?" - it quantifies signal quality, ...
RF Coverage Prediction Tools
Why Model Before Deploying Walking a coverage area with a radio after installing a repeater is va...
Field Testing and Coverage Verification
Why Field Test? Even the best RF prediction tools are only as good as their terrain models. Build...
Mesh Network Capacity and Congestion
LoRa Channel Capacity LoRa is a low-data-rate technology. Unlike Wi-Fi, the RF channel is shared ...
Advanced Configuration
Path Hash Modes (MeshCore)
Path Hash Modes (MeshCore) Path hash modes control how repeaters identify themselves in routing p...
Regional Scoping with ISO Codes (MeshCore)
Regional Scoping (MeshCore Region Filtering) MeshCore region scoping (region filtering) lets repe...
Frequency Coordination and Channel Planning
When multiple independent mesh networks coexist in the same geographic area, frequency and channe...
Telemetry & Monitoring
Link Budget & Propagation
RF Propagation Environments
How 915 MHz RF behaves across urban, forested, mountainous, and coastal environments.
Urban Propagation
Urban Propagation at 915 MHz Dense urban environments present some of the most complex RF propaga...
Forest and Vegetation Propagation
Forest and Vegetation Propagation at 915 MHz Vegetation is one of the most significant impairment...
Mountain and Complex Terrain
Mountain and Complex Terrain Propagation Mountain and highly variable terrain introduces propagat...
Water and Coastal Propagation
Water and Coastal Propagation Water surfaces create some of the most favorable RF propagation con...
Node Placement Strategy
Principles and methods for selecting repeater sites that maximise coverage and network reliability.
Repeater Placement Principles
The Three Rules of Repeater Placement Every successful LoRa mesh deployment rests on three place...
Coverage Radius Estimation by Terrain Type
The Radio Horizon Formula The theoretical radio horizon for a single antenna at height h metres ...
The Repeater Grid Approach for Urban Coverage
Why a Grid Approach? Ad-hoc repeater placement - putting nodes wherever a willing host can be fo...
Designing for Redundancy
Why Single-Path Mesh Is Fragile A tree-topology mesh - where each node has exactly one path back...
Hop Budget and Routing
How hop limits, routing protocols, and multi-hop link budgets determine end-to-end message delivery.
Network Monitoring and Management
Building a Mesh Network Dashboard
A community mesh network dashboard gives operators a real-time view of network health - which nod...
Using meshmap.net and Community Maps
meshmap.net is the primary public Meshtastic network map. It shows only Meshtastic nodes that hav...
Mesh Network Change Management
A community mesh network is shared infrastructure. Changes to configuration - channel presets, no...