Why is there a 6 hop limit? Why not infinite?
I’m curious if it’s architecture limited, regulation of radio tech, business-model of goTenna, spam-proofing technique, resource (power, bandwidth) logic?
I can imagine many reasons.
Why was it as simple as upgrading software (eg 5.0) or paying money to goTenna (goTenna plus), to get more hops?
BTW, “profit for goTenna” is a totally cool answer in my books. I’m just curious.
Without getting too technical, there is a practical limit to the number of node hops that can be supported on the finite radio band available to the goTenna Mesh product. Infinite hops in a node rich environment would flood the limited frequency range with data traffic and choke the available capacity of the band. Increasing the maximum number of hops permitted decreases the performance of the Mesh and its delivery success rate. While I have not seen an explanation of why the product team set the limit at 6, instead of 5, or 7, or X, the basic principle is explained by the paper written by goTenna’s Chief Scientist. I’ll try to find the link and post it in this thread.
This thread provides some insight into how the protocol works, including an explanation by goTenna’s Chief Scientist: Efficient hopping
Here is the post with a link to the papers by goTenna’s Chief Scientist: Mesh networking explainers by goTenna's Chief Scientist!