Yesterday (Tuesday, November 18, 2025) the leads of the NoVA meshtastic made the following annoucement:

NoVa Meshers

With 300+ nodes now appearing on the Mesh in a 24-hour period and seeing nodes as far south as Lexington, VA, and as far north as Frederick, MD, it’s time to suggest some node configuration changes to our NoVa Mesh nodes. At your leisure please adjust nodes as follows:

To extend and maximize message traversal across the Mesh:

Radio Config > LoRa > Hop Limit = 7

To help with unnecessary routing and message repeating issues set all nodes as follows:

Device Config > Device > Device Role = CLIENT_MUTE
UNLESS:
You’re providing Wide Area coverage extension then = CLIENT or ROUTER
You’re providing coverage extension for CLIENT_MUTE house nodes then = CLIENT_BASE (and set Favorites)
https://meshtastic.org/blog/choosing-the-right-device-role/

To help with reducing congestion issues on the Mesh several beacon intervals are suggested to be raised as follows:

Device Config > Device > Node Info Broadcast = 3 hours (10800 secs)
Device Config > Position > Broadcast Interval = 3 hours (10800 secs)
Device Config > Position > Minimum Interval = 15 minutes (900 secs)
Device Config > Position > Minimum Distance = 1000

If your node supports any of the following with built in sensors increase intervals as follows:

Module Config > Telemetry > Device Metric update = 3 hours
Module Config > Telemetry > Environmental Metric update = 3 hours
Module Config > Telemetry > Air Quality Metric update = 3 hours
Module Config > Telemetry > Power Metric update = 3 hours

For only those nodes providing wide area coverage extension and wishing to report direct neighbors:

Module Config > Neighbor Info = Enabled & Update Interval = 6 hours (21600 secs)

Hopefully this will allow for more reliable message traffic at the cost of fewer and less frequent name, telemetry and position updates.

Happy Meshing!

andyz – K1RA – Warrenton