After looking at the direct range between two MeshCore devices in part 3 of this series, another exciting aspect of MeshCore is how messages are forwarded between repeaters in the network. In the smartphone app, one can see the list of all repeaters that have forwarded a message, as each message does not only contain the content, but the chain of repeater IDs it has gone through. The screenshot on the left is a good example of a relatively direct path.
There are also websites such as this one for my region, which collect and visualize information. For the same source and destination devices on another day, the path looked quite different. And not only different, but also very zig-zag as the screenshot at the bottom shows. This is only one path, the message was received at many other places as well, as the web site I linked to above also visualizes very nicely. If messages are sent in ‘channels’, the message content is in the clear. If sent directly between two devices, the message is encrypted and the website can’t show the content. Still, the metadata can still be observed. I am really fascinated by how messages are flowing through the network and both examples show that the paths taken are quite surprising.
