8 ms·

You seemed to have made an account just for this reply. Care to explain the cynicism? I’m out of the loop with the toxicity.

by xyx0826 9mo ago

bb88 9mo ago
I'm not OP, but there's a lot of criticism of meshtastic from people knowledgable about mesh networks. I also have been critical of meshtastic on this site. Here's an example of a good criticism: https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0215 https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0215 I have no experience with the community, but if they couldn't have been bothered with understanding AlohaNet from several decades previous, than maybe it's not surprising. I myself have been fairly critical of meshtastic, you can probably search for bb88 and meshtastic to find more criticisms. To save you some time, I live in a fairly populous city with a bunch of meshtastic nodes, and can't get a message accross from me to my friend who lives one hop away.
- wtallis 9mo ago
  It's not clear to me which portions of that very long newsletter are responding specifically to Meshtastic, but it seems like the most relevant section starts by listing some challenges but offers nothing in the way of solutions except to digress into talking about a wildly different class of radio hardware (SDRs that can monitor many channels at once).
  - bb88 9mo ago
    So you mean other than these sections right? "Thought experiments about mesh networking" "Hard Lessons Learned -- What not to do" "Meshtastic Is Rediscovering Lessons (Already Learned) of Amateur Radio Data Networking" Instead of actually trying to understand the arguments these days, it's easier to inject noise into the argument, proclaiming it's too "hard to find" or "too hard to understand." Mesh networking is a hard topic. Expect to expend some brain cells to understand it. I'm not here to spoon feed you tech that was well understood 3 decades ago.
    - wtallis 9mo ago
      How about you make an actual argument here in this thread, instead of vaguely gesturing at an excessively long newsletter and claiming there's relevant substance in there somewhere? Or at least tell me if I've incorrectly interpreted the "Meshtastic Is Rediscovering Lessons (Already Learned) of Amateur Radio Data Networking" section as listing problems but no solutions aside from buying a radically different (more expensive and power-hungry) type of radio? Try making some specific suggestions for what Meshtastic is doing wrong that could be done differently. That way, we can tell whether your beef is with the Meshtastic software and protocol, or with their choice of LoRa radio hardware, or if you're just trying to preach about your ideal mesh network design with unstated assumptions about the priorities and constraints of such a network.
      - immibis 9mo ago
        All the information you seek is found in the article you stubbornly refuse to read.
        Groxx 9mo ago
        having read that meshtastic section: I mostly agree with their requests tbh. the only suggestions in there seem to be "use full duplex" (with approximately one reason why, though it's a good one) and "solve frequency discovery with SDR" which they've already addressed as somewhat ridiculous - because it is, for someone interested in a low power and low cost network. particularly the SDR stuff, which is the VAST majority of that section. this is not at all the same target audience as meshtastic: >A computer with “sufficient” compute power and RAM, to run the ka9q-radio software. KA9Q has stated that a Raspberry Pi 4 is sufficient, and now we have the Raspberry Pi 5 with up to 16 GB of RAM, for only $120. that's like suggesting the way to fix a wireless problem is to use a wire. otherwise the criticism seems to summarize as "it's slow and bad" and well. okay? that's hardly constructive, whether or not it's accurate. the whole thing reads like "the solution is left as an exercise to the reader ;)" because it sounds like it's written by and for people who are already experts and just want to read a cathartic list of flaws they already know. and/or "buy better hardware lol". it's not at all the logical slam-dunk that you seem to think it is.
elevation 9mo ago
Even without toxicity, as a domain expert, I'm cynical about community experiments in this space in general. Hobbyist "mesh networking" communities readily adopt suboptimal modulation, frame specification, packet format, encoding, ineffective mesh arrangements, flood-prone routing mechanisms, poor reference hardware, and bloated user interfaces, while often ignoring basic practices like forward error correction, collision detection/multiplexing, trust mechanisms. Community solutions tend to be opinionated in the worst ways ("we assumed you'd use an arduino" or "here's a mandatory packet header field to indicate whether you're currently in a hot air balloon") and under-constrained in areas where opinion would be helpful "our client UI has 75 configurable options -- get one wrong and you won't be able to communicate." By the time there is a "community" it's too late to address these issues: network effects have already locked in the worst design decisions.

You seemed to have made an account just for this reply. Care to explain the cynicism? I’m out of the loop with the toxicity.

by xyx0826 9mo ago

You seemed to have made an account just for this reply. Care to explain the cynicism? I’m out of the loop with the toxicity.

bb88 9mo ago

I'm not OP, but there's a lot of criticism of meshtastic from people knowledgable about mesh networks. I also have been critical of meshtastic on this site. Here's an example of a good criticism: https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0215 https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0215 I have no experience with the community, but if they couldn't have been bothered with understanding AlohaNet from several decades previous, than maybe it's not surprising. I myself have been fairly critical of meshtastic, you can probably search for bb88 and meshtastic to find more criticisms. To save you some time, I live in a fairly populous city with a bunch of meshtastic nodes, and can't get a message accross from me to my friend who lives one hop away.

wtallis 9mo ago
It's not clear to me which portions of that very long newsletter are responding specifically to Meshtastic, but it seems like the most relevant section starts by listing some challenges but offers nothing in the way of solutions except to digress into talking about a wildly different class of radio hardware (SDRs that can monitor many channels at once).
- bb88 9mo ago
  So you mean other than these sections right? "Thought experiments about mesh networking" "Hard Lessons Learned -- What not to do" "Meshtastic Is Rediscovering Lessons (Already Learned) of Amateur Radio Data Networking" Instead of actually trying to understand the arguments these days, it's easier to inject noise into the argument, proclaiming it's too "hard to find" or "too hard to understand." Mesh networking is a hard topic. Expect to expend some brain cells to understand it. I'm not here to spoon feed you tech that was well understood 3 decades ago.
  - wtallis 9mo ago
    How about you make an actual argument here in this thread, instead of vaguely gesturing at an excessively long newsletter and claiming there's relevant substance in there somewhere? Or at least tell me if I've incorrectly interpreted the "Meshtastic Is Rediscovering Lessons (Already Learned) of Amateur Radio Data Networking" section as listing problems but no solutions aside from buying a radically different (more expensive and power-hungry) type of radio? Try making some specific suggestions for what Meshtastic is doing wrong that could be done differently. That way, we can tell whether your beef is with the Meshtastic software and protocol, or with their choice of LoRa radio hardware, or if you're just trying to preach about your ideal mesh network design with unstated assumptions about the priorities and constraints of such a network.
    - immibis 9mo ago
      All the information you seek is found in the article you stubbornly refuse to read.
      - Groxx 9mo ago
        having read that meshtastic section: I mostly agree with their requests tbh. the only suggestions in there seem to be "use full duplex" (with approximately one reason why, though it's a good one) and "solve frequency discovery with SDR" which they've already addressed as somewhat ridiculous - because it is, for someone interested in a low power and low cost network. particularly the SDR stuff, which is the VAST majority of that section. this is not at all the same target audience as meshtastic: >A computer with “sufficient” compute power and RAM, to run the ka9q-radio software. KA9Q has stated that a Raspberry Pi 4 is sufficient, and now we have the Raspberry Pi 5 with up to 16 GB of RAM, for only $120. that's like suggesting the way to fix a wireless problem is to use a wire. otherwise the criticism seems to summarize as "it's slow and bad" and well. okay? that's hardly constructive, whether or not it's accurate. the whole thing reads like "the solution is left as an exercise to the reader ;)" because it sounds like it's written by and for people who are already experts and just want to read a cathartic list of flaws they already know. and/or "buy better hardware lol". it's not at all the logical slam-dunk that you seem to think it is.

elevation 9mo ago

Even without toxicity, as a domain expert, I'm cynical about community experiments in this space in general. Hobbyist "mesh networking" communities readily adopt suboptimal modulation, frame specification, packet format, encoding, ineffective mesh arrangements, flood-prone routing mechanisms, poor reference hardware, and bloated user interfaces, while often ignoring basic practices like forward error correction, collision detection/multiplexing, trust mechanisms. Community solutions tend to be opinionated in the worst ways ("we assumed you'd use an arduino" or "here's a mandatory packet header field to indicate whether you're currently in a hot air balloon") and under-constrained in areas where opinion would be helpful "our client UI has 75 configurable options -- get one wrong and you won't be able to communicate." By the time there is a "community" it's too late to address these issues: network effects have already locked in the worst design decisions.