LoRa is a radio technology that trades speed for range: it sends small amounts of data, slowly, over kilometres, using very little power. If you know WiFi and Bluetooth, the easiest way to understand LoRa is to see what it gives up and what it gains.
| WiFi | Bluetooth (BLE) | LoRa with Meshtastic | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Range | tens of metres | metres to tens of metres | typically 1–10+ km with a clear line of sight; hundreds of metres to a few km in a dense city |
| Data rate | Mbit/s to Gbit/s | about 1–2 Mbit/s | about 1 kbit/s on the default LONG_FAST preset |
| What you send | anything: video, web pages | audio, files, sensor data | short text messages, positions, sensor readings |
| Frequency | 2.4 / 5 / 6 GHz | 2.4 GHz | sub-GHz; in Nepal 865–868 MHz |
| Network shape | star (devices ↔ router) | point-to-point or star | mesh: every node can relay for others |
| Internet needed? | usually | no | no (optional bridge via MQTT) |
| Power use | high | low | very low |
LoRa uses chirp spread spectrum: each bit is spread over a wide sweep of frequencies and sent slowly. A receiver can pick the signal out even when it is weaker than the background noise. That’s why the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) you see in Meshtastic is often negative and still works; on LONG_FAST, packets still decode at roughly −15 to −17 dB SNR.
Lower frequencies (865 MHz versus 2.4 GHz) also travel further and pass through walls and trees better.
With WiFi, your phone talks to a router. With Meshtastic, there is no router: when a node hears a message, it re-broadcasts it so nodes further away can hear it too. Each message carries a hop limit (3 by default) so it doesn’t bounce around forever. In the control panel the “hops” figure shows how many other nodes relayed a packet before it reached you.
No. LoRaWAN is a network protocol built on LoRa radios where sensors talk to gateways run by a network operator. Meshtastic uses the same LoRa radios but its own peer-to-peer mesh protocol, with no gateways or operators. A Meshtastic node won’t join a LoRaWAN network, and the other way round.
| Setting | WiFi/Bluetooth analogy | Meshtastic meaning |
|---|---|---|
Region (e.g. NP_865) |
the country setting on a router | which frequencies and power the radio may legally use |
Modem preset (e.g. LONG_FAST) |
802.11n vs 802.11ac | trade-off between range and speed (spreading factor and bandwidth) |
| Channel and key (PSK) | network name (SSID) and password | which messages your node can decrypt; the default channel uses a well-known public key |
| Frequency slot | the WiFi channel number | worked out automatically from the region, preset and channel name |
All nodes that want to talk must share the same region, preset, channel name and key. See the official radio settings overview and LoRa configuration.
Most Meshtastic boards also have WiFi and Bluetooth, but they are used around the LoRa link:
Messages on a channel are encrypted with that channel’s key (AES-256), but the default channel’s key is public, so treat it like a public chat room. Since firmware 2.5, direct messages use public-key encryption. Read Meshtastic’s encryption overview for the limits.
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