Welcome, Meshtastic users!

If you’re reading this, that means you came across one of our beacon nodes on the LongFast radio preset. That’s awesome, and we’re glad to make your acquaintance!

The LINC mesh operates on the MediumFast radio preset.

While LongFast as a default setting is good for a lot of things, one thing the Meshtastic developers never intended was for LongFast to be used for large meshes spanning across multiple cities to send messages between dozens of users hundreds of miles apart. In order to avoid the congestion issues that many Meshtastic projects have experienced, we made the decision early on to use the MediumFast preset, which has 3–4 times the bandwidth of LongFast. This means it can support many more users and much higher traffic volume.

Another decision we’ve made to prevent congestion is using the LOCAL_ONLY rebroadcast setting for all LINC infrastructure nodes. This means that traffic on private channels won’t be rebroadcast by official LINC nodes. That doesn’t mean you can’t use private channels! It only means that official LINC nodes won’t retransmit those messages. You can still rely on the nodes of other users—including your own—to keep your private channel connected. Also, direct messages between users will still be rebroadcast.

Getting Connected to LINC

To connect your own Meshtastic node to the LINC network, you need to follow these three simple steps:

  1. Change your node’s LoRa Preset to “Medium Range - Fast”

    …also known as “MediumFast.”

  1. Change your node’s Frequency Slot to 45

    This step is important. If you leave the Frequency Slot set to something else, you’ll be on the wrong frequency and won’t be able to connect to the LINC mesh!

  2. Ensure the default channel name has been changed from “LongFast” to “MediumFast”

    This is the one that usually gets missed. If you have the wrong channel name, you may see other users, but none of your packets will be rebroadcast by the official LINC infrastructure nodes! Leave the default encryption key in place (“AQ==”).

If you have multiple nodes, you’ll need to follow these steps for each one that you want to use on LINC. You don’t need to flash new firmware or reset anything, although it’s a good idea to clear your nodeDB.

But, I’m scared to switch!

Change is scary, but don’t worry: if you decide you want to go back to the default settings, you always can. You just won’t be able to use LINC anymore. You should do whatever is best for you and your friends to stay connected.

As a reminder, the default settings are:

  1. LoRa Preset: “Long Range - Fast”

  2. Frequency Slot: 20

  3. Default channel name: “LongFast”

Can’t you bridge LongFast and MediumFast somehow?

Probably, but we don’t really want to. We’d just be bringing all the congestion and abuse common on LongFast over to MediumFast. This way, we have a clean mesh to work with, and the multitude of abandoned and abusive LongFast nodes are not causing any interference on it.

We understand the necessity of maintaining a presence on LongFast in order to welcome newcomers; that’s exactly why we put up beacons. But these beacons don’t retransmit and have a Hop Count of 0 so they won’t cause any additional congestion on the already-strained LongFast mesh. They exist only to let Meshtastic users on the default settings know about LINC.

What now?

We invite you to find out more about LINC, or learn how you can help out! If you have any questions, feel free to contact us. Enjoy!