About Regions

What is region scoping?

Every MeshCore message is either a flood — sent to everyone in range — or scoped to a named geographic region. Without scoping, every message propagates across the entire mesh. With scoping, a Pullman/Moscow chat stays in puw, a statewide net reaches wa, and a PNW-wide emergency can still hit pnw.

Region tags are carried by repeaters, not clients. When you send a scoped message, only repeaters that explicitly carry that tag will forward it — the rest drop it. Tags are hierarchical: a repeater carrying puw also implicitly serves e-wa, wa, and pnw traffic.

Why it matters

• Traffic should go where it's meant. Without scoping, every message propagates across the entire mesh — including areas where it's irrelevant. Scoping keeps local traffic local.
• Relevance. Without scoping, a repeater's RF reach determines how far your message travels — a hilltop node with wide RF coverage forces local Pullman/Moscow conversation onto every distant repeater in range. Region scoping breaks that link: RF reach and scope boundary are separate. A message travels as far as its intended community, not as far as the antenna can reach. On June 27, 2026 we started seeing unscoped Public channel traffic from Wenatchee and the Tri-Cities appearing on the Palouse Mesh — a real example of how an unscoped network delivers traffic with no geographic filter at all.
• Scale. As more communities join MeshCore across the PNW, an uncoordinated flood mesh doesn't scale. Regions are what let the network grow without collapsing under its own traffic.

Our region hierarchy

Palouse Mesh sits within a proposed PNW-wide region structure. Every repeater on the network carries these tags so traffic can be scoped at any level:

west              — Entire mesh (Western US / SW Canada)
  pnw             — Pacific Northwest
    wa            — Washington State
      e-wa        — Eastern Washington
        puw       — Pullman / Moscow  ← you are here
    id            — Idaho  (Moscow, Lewiston, Clearwater area)
      cda         — N. Idaho panhandle / Coeur d'Alene  (per Gessaman's proposal)
    ie            — Inland Empire  (cross-border · Eastern WA + N. Idaho)
      palouse     — Palouse corridor  (proposed · Whitman Co. WA + Latah Co. ID)
      lc          — Lewiston / Clarkston valley  (proposed · cross-border)
    or            — Oregon
      c-or        — Central Oregon
        pdt       — Wallowa County  (NE Oregon)

Inter-region coordination is key. Region boundaries only work if neighboring communities agree on them — a scope tag means nothing if the mesh on the other side of the border is using a different name for the same area, or no names at all. This is an active, ongoing process: as more communities across the PNW adopt region scoping, the hierarchy gets more granular and more useful. The goal isn't a fixed map but a living agreement between operators.

A node can carry multiple region tags. A repeater in Eastern Washington can carry both e-wa and ie — so Inland Empire community traffic flows across the WA/ID border without affecting unrelated WA regions. Two proposed sub-regions sit under ie: palouse (the Palouse agricultural corridor spanning Whitman Co. WA and Latah Co. ID) and lc (Lewiston/Clarkston valley, cross-border). A wsu or uofi scope could keep campus traffic on campus without flooding the broader PUW region. These are examples of how the hierarchy extends as communities develop.

PUW region tag reference

Each tag in the hierarchy must be explicitly listed — there is no automatic inheritance. When someone sends a message scoped to puw, only repeaters that explicitly carry puw will forward it. A node carrying wa but not puw will drop it. Every ancestor in the chain must be listed.

Full hierarchy — what each side carries

Washington-side

west                — Entire mesh (Western US / SW Canada)
  pnw               — Pacific Northwest
    wa              — Washington State
      e-wa          — Eastern Washington
        puw         — Pullman / Moscow  ← local scope
    ie              — Inland Empire (cross-border · Eastern WA + N. Idaho)
      palouse       — Palouse corridor (proposed · Whitman Co. WA + Latah Co. ID)
      lc            — Lewiston / Clarkston valley (proposed · cross-border)

Idaho-side

west                — Entire mesh (Western US / SW Canada)
  pnw               — Pacific Northwest
    id              — Idaho (Moscow, Lewiston, Clearwater area)
      cda           — N. Idaho panhandle / Coeur d'Alene
    ie              — Inland Empire (cross-border · Eastern WA + N. Idaho)
      palouse       — Palouse corridor (proposed · Whitman Co. WA + Latah Co. ID)
      lc            — Lewiston / Clarkston valley (proposed · cross-border)

Oregon-side

west                — Entire mesh (Western US / SW Canada)
  pnw               — Pacific Northwest
    or              — Oregon
      c-or          — Central Oregon
        pdt         — Wallowa County (NE Oregon)  ← local scope

Nodes on a peak, hilltop, tower, or ridgeline with wide-area RF coverage that straddles a region boundary should consider carrying the bordering region tag(s) as well. gessaman.com/meshcore/regions/config/ ↗

Bot scoping

Bots are the clearest case for region scoping. An unscoped bot floods every repeater and every user on the mesh — regardless of whether the output is relevant to them. A weather bot for Pullman shouldn't be hitting nodes in Spokane or Lewiston.

The pattern that works: give bot output its own dedicated channel (e.g. #wx-palouse, #bot-palouse) and scope it to the bot's actual service area. Users who want it subscribe; repeaters outside the region don't carry it. That's the difference between a bot being a useful tool and being noise on someone else's mesh.

Reference: gessaman.com/meshcore/regions/#bot-behavior-with-regions

Go deeper

• Repeater Setup — Step 6 — configure region tags on your node
• Regions Test — live isolation tests, packet-level detail, open hypotheses
• gessaman.com/meshcore/regions/ — PNW region coordination & config generator