Meshtastic Role Setting

Recommended Meshtastic role settings for your locations

CLIENT [default]

For most people this is the default This enables you to communicate with your node via bluetooth and your app and will re-route traffic your node picks up to others. Use if you have good aerial at good height.

CLIENT_MUTE

Recommended for portable nodes walking, cars, planes and other vehicles. it will pick up nearby nodes but it will not re-route. This is important as mobile nodes in varying locations will poorly re-route mesh traffic and causes issue for others.

ROUTER

Only use this if you are located at a vantage point high on a hill or apartment block with clear line of sight viewshed to far away places and should also have an optimal set-up

Misuse of this mode is causing meshtastic to NOT route messages properly

REPEATER

Only use this if you are located at a vantage point high on a hill or apartment block with clear line of sight viewshed to far away places. You should also have an optimal set-up

Used for extending coverage. This will not show up on node lists. Use at height

CLIENT HIDDEN

This is a stealth mode. e.g. for nodes hidden in a tree

TRACKER

Broadcasts GPS position packets as priority, use as a tracker

ROUTER_CLIENT [Depreciated July-2024]

This role was deprecated because it's frequent misuse in non-strategically placed roles, leading to increased rebroadcast packet collisions as well as premature hop consumption decreasing the effective range of a mesh.

In some larger public meshes, it has been reported that almost half of the nodes were configured as ROUTER_CLIENT and ROUTER.

Going forward, the mixed ROUTER_CLIENT role will be retired and simply behave as the CLIENT role.

Alternatively, users can decide to use the ROUTER role if their node does indeed fall into the strategically placed criteria, such as on top of a mountain, skyscraper, or any other location with a significant line of sight viewshed advantage.

Examples of non-strategically placed nodes would be any mobile node, a car node, a home node on a mast, or really any node without significant elevation difference providing advantage to the mesh's reach.

Nodes under those placement conditions should not be configured as ROUTER or REPEATER role.

GROUP / TEAM EXERCISE (HUNTING, EXPLORATION ETC.)

If you have a group of you out in the wilderness on exercise and wish to keep in contact via Meshtastic nodes. I would suggest you try to have one Base station router or repeater node set-up in a vantage point. This would ideally by higher up than the terrain you are exploring. e.g. back at your parked Vehicle ideally an Antenna on a pole or on top of the roof Then have your individual team members with nodes set to client. This would give you the best routing of messages.

This setup would also work well if you were for instance a farmer with a lot of land, you could have a node or nodes in high vantage positions set as router or repeater then several other nodes set as client

DETAILED MESHTASTIC ROLE TABLE

Device Role	BLE WiFi Serial	Screen Enabled	Power Consumed	Retransmit	Prioritized Routing	Visible in Nodes List
CLIENT	Yes	Yes	Regular	Yes	No	Yes
CLIENT_MUTE 🚶🚗 ✈️	Yes	Yes	Lowest	No	No	Yes
CLIENT_HIDDEN	Yes	Yes	Lowest	Local Only	No	No
TRACKER	Yes	No	Regular / Low	Awake Only	No	Yes
LOST_AND_FOUND	Yes	No	Regular	Yes	No	Yes
SENSOR	Yes	No	Regular / Low	Awake Only	No	Yes
TAK	Yes	Optional	Regular	Yes	No	Yes
TAK_TRACKER	Yes	Optional	Regular	Yes	No	Yes
ROUTER 🗼 ᨒ	No	No	High	Yes	Yes	Yes
REPEATER 🗼 ᨒ	Yes	No	High	Yes	Yes	No

Join the Local Meshtastic Community

If you are also based in the Local UK Buckinghamshire & Bedfordshire area check out our social medea links links in the footer, where you can find out more about other nodes in the area and help each other complete the mesh network