Requiring Scopes¶

This Page by the devs of the Kiekr MeshCore app gives a good explanation of the limitations of unscoped traffic and what the maximum capacity is (for EU radios conforming to the 10% airtime limit, which is 20% of what everyones repeater is set at if they don't change the default setting, tldr; what works with 50% default airtime will likely break at 10% airtime).

Starting June 1st (2026), the Repeaters that act as the primary links across the Irish Sea to Scotland, England, Isle of Man, and Wales will require a region scope of ioi, sco, or iom to have a flood message relayed to the Island (tl,dr; region denyf * is happening on those repeaters). This is to ensure that only traffic people intend to share with the Island of Ireland and Scotland is rebroadcast here. There is a finite amount of messages that can be traveling the mesh at anyone time, and this lets us ensure that users here can chat with each other.

Flood Packets (Group Messages, Adverts, Repeater Admin Commands) without a scope use up a significant amount of airtime, even if they are sent on private channels or are on channels people don't have on their device (they are still sent processed by every device on the mesh that can hear it, they are just ignored).

This does not impact users who are using Room Servers or are sending messages via DMs that have known paths between Device A in Ireland and Device B in Wales.

If you are in an area outside of the Island of Ireland, Isle of Man, or Scotland and would like to message back and forth with us, please contact us on the Discord with the general region name you've deployed, and we will add it

If you are on the Island of Ireland, set your default region in Experimental Settings to ioi and that is it. * will still be supported at local repeaters so new users can discover the mesh, but we suggest everyone follow the Companion Setup guide so they have the best experience with the Mesh here.

Repeater Admin Task¶

We are specifically asking that repeaters that are on the boundary of the Island of Ireland and are picking up traffic (two way or one way) from England, Isle of Man, Scotland, and Wales, to disable unscoped messages On or near June 1st, this requires the repeater to be on firmware version 1.15 or later, as you will want to also have your repeater set its default region to ioi. If you have any questions email mrz@loraproject.org, ask in #ireland, or join the Discord

You can check if your repeater is one that cross the boundary by using the Neighbors view in the MeshCore App when viewing a repeater. If you load it and see neighbors that are across the Irish Sea, then you should be running the commands:

region default ioi
region denyf *
region save

The output of the region command should show this, note how * no longer has a F next to it:

*
 ioi F
  bhd^ F
 ioi-admin F
 sco F
 iom F

Add this output to your Owner Info page of the repeater and click save.

Repeaters even pretty far inland can reach across the sea, as the neighbors list for Collin Hill and Slieve Binnian show:

Using Regions¶

How do I use them?

To chat in #ireland select the triple dot in the top right corner of the official MeshCore app, select Set Region Scope and pick ioi, if ioi isn't there, you can manually add it to the list with the + button or run Discover Regions from the menu options on that screen. For #scotland use sco.

FAQ¶

Why do these not match the ones listed by LocalMesh?¶

First, LocalMesh.co.uk is an AI slop driven webpage, if you notice it is now reciting old information from this page here. The LoRa Project page is maintained by the humans on the Mesh Radio Ireland (N&S) Discord.

The Island of Ireland was decided as the least worst option, with the name of ioi, to recognize the geographic boundary that all of us volunteering our time to operate the mesh are working with. Since we are more closely coordinating our efforts on the Island than across the Irish Sea, this makes sense.

Check Scotland Mesh's website for their information, not localmesh.co.uk

We will add resources to other nearby meshes as they publish them somewhere responsibly.

Do I need to set a scope for my messages?¶

Yes, if you want to make sure they reach all of the Island of Ireland, set the default scope in Experimental Settings to ioi, for specific channels there may be additional scopes, such as sco for #scotland or iom for #manx (or #isleofman).

We do ask that any Bots and other automation are configured to match the regions we list below, just to minimize the traffic those automated systems generate. That frees up airtime for new users to send messages and chat on the mesh (and learn about regions), instead of having such a poor experience they turn off their devices thinking that its either too silent or too unreliable to be worth joining the mesh.

Why these scopes?¶

This may seem reductive for those who live here on the Island of Ireland, but since this is read by people aren't: the history of the Island of Ireland is a complicated one. We could not find names in any one ISO document that satisfied all requirements, so ioi was borne. After that it was following IATA codes since that was how MeshMapper, our primary tool for laying out repeaters, used for naming regions. We then decided to use provinces as the boundary lines for the regions, since those are familiar for us here on the island, and predate the divisions that are reflected in ISO.

Scopes:¶

ioi: Island of Ireland, the parent for the following:
- bhd: Ulster, from Belfast City Airport
- snn: Munster, from Shannon International Airport
- dub: Leinster, from Dublin Internation Airpot
- noc: Connacht, from Ireland West Airport (Formerly Knock Airport)
sco: Scotland, who are planning to drop *, so are implementing their default region as sco
iom: Isle of Man
ioi-admin: Admin traffic, #wardrive pings, separate from ioi which is supported in Scotland, but doesn't need that traffic

For up to date information on Scotland's sub regions, please refer to their primary project website, or just ask in #scotland (scoped to region sco, of course!) and they will direct you to the right place.

the closest alternative to iata for the province names could be the ISO_3166-2:IE province IDs, but having ie is the opposite side of the problem that the LocalMesh solution that lists six of the nine counties of Ulster as GB-NIR

How does this work in practice¶

Jim is in Belfast, and has their companion default set to ioi, they post a message in Public. Susan in Glasgow sees the message, even though her companion is set to sco, the repeaters between Glasgow and Belfast support both ioi and sco - and her companion will report all the messages it hears in the Public channel, even if it doesn't match the Region Susan is using. Susan can reply with a message in Public, which gets scoped to sco for her, and Jim will still see the reply, since the same thing happens for a sco scoped message.

Neither of them see the message sent from Jeremy in Chester who doesn't know they can be heard in Liverpool, let alone in Antrim, so is complaining about his rash again, much to the befuddlement of everyone else on the unscoped mesh around him. Jeremy's messages aren't scoped to a region supported by the repeaters Jim and Susan rely on to get messages, so it never reaches them.

As the number of users on the mesh grows, we may ask everyone to set more specific default regions (maybe bhd for Ulster, instead of ioi), to keep the default radius small, but still allow people who walk to chat with all of Ireland to post in #ireland scoped to ioi.

I would like to discuss this more¶

Please consider joining the Discord or email the website admin to be invited to the mailing list if you are not a discord person. We ask you follow our Code of Conduct in these spaces.

Adding regions to a repeater¶

Regions are now required for MeshMapper Wardriving to map your repeater

Region allows you to scope a message sent to a channel (public or private) to only be relayed by other repeaters that have that region on their list. If you follow the below scoping, one could set a region for the channel #norniron on their companion to be ioi and then messages will only be relayed by repeaters that have ioi set to be relayed. A repeater in Scotland that hears a message scoped for ioi won't relay the message.

Repeaters should at minimum allow the region ioi and the home province (bhd,dub,noc,snn) the repeater is in. You can optionally allow all provinces if you wish. MeshMapper is currently restricted so it will broadcast for the ioi Region, but as the mesh grows, active wardriving sessions will be restricted to the regions.

The latest regions and how to add them to the repeater for the Island of Ireland lives in the Repeater Setup section.