Glossary

A plain-English guide to the terms you'll come across.

Node - a single Mode-X Mesh radio device. Every node is both a messenger and a relay for others.

Mesh - the network as a whole: all the nodes that can hear each other, directly or through relays.

Hop - one step of a message's journey from one node to the next. A message can take several hops to cross the mesh.

LoRa - the long-range, low-power radio technology Mode-X Mesh uses. It trades speed for distance, which is why a small node can reach for miles.

Channel - a "room" for conversation. Communal channels (General, your town, your region) are open; private chats are encrypted between two people.

General - the network-wide channel every node can hear, everywhere.

Geo channel - a channel tied to a place, like a town or region, that your node joins automatically based on where it is.

Role - the job a node is doing on the mesh, from a simple Companion to a Relay, Repeater or Gateway. See the Roles page.

Smart Auto - the default setting that lets a node choose its own role based on conditions.

Relay / Repeater - nodes that rebroadcast others' traffic to extend the network's reach. Best placed high, with good power.

Gateway - a node or device that connects the mesh to the internet.

Uplink - the path a node uses to reach the internet: its own Wi-Fi or tether, or a nearby gateway.

Telemetry - health information a node shares: battery level, signal quality, and any sensor readings. Contains no personal content.

Link quality (LQ) - a measure of how good the radio connection between two nodes is, shown as a percentage. Higher is better.

RSSI / SNR - technical signal measurements. RSSI is how strong a signal is; SNR is how clear it is against background noise. You'll see these on node and route pages.

End-to-end encryption - scrambling a message on the sender's device so only the recipient can read it. Used for all private messages.

Moving - a flag a node raises when it detects it's travelling, so others know it may not be a reliable relay just then.

Mailbox - a node that holds messages for others who are temporarily out of range and delivers them later.

Public map - the live map on this website. Nodes appear on it only if their owner opts in.