About Regions

Quick Region Reference

Copy the commands for your repeater's location and firmware version. Full step-by-step details in Repeater Setup — Step 6.

What is region scoping?

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

Region tag scopes are carried by repeaters. When you send a scoped message from your companion, only repeaters that explicitly carry that tag will forward it — the rest drop it. Tags are hierarchical, but administrative only, not functionally. WA-side repeaters carrying puw should also explicitly list its full ancestor chain — se-wa / wa / pnw / west; an Idaho-side repeater lists lws / n-id / id the same way.

Not all scopes are geographic. palouse sits at the same level as wa, id, and or — a peer under pnw, not above or below any of them. It's the shared, cross-border identity for the Palouse as one community — the conceptual umbrella that ties the WA-side, ID-side, and OR-side local scopes (puw / lws / pdt) together under a single name. A message scoped to palouse reaches every repeater that listed it, regardless of which state that repeater is in.

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. Scoping separates RF reach from scope boundary: the antenna still reaches past the community it serves, but a repeater that hears an out-of-region message won't relay it onward, so the chain stops at the first hop instead of spreading across the mesh. On June 27, 2026 we started seeing unscoped Public channel traffic from Wenatchee and the Tri-Cities appearing on the Palouse Mesh; a few days later, Raven's Roost in the Cascades opened up our region to Seattle, Portland and B.C. — 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 and beyond, 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
    palouse       — Cross-border shared scope (WA + ID + OR tri-state corner)
    wa            — Washington State
      se-wa       — Southeastern Washington (Pullman, Walla Walla, Tri-Cities)
        puw       — WA-side local scope
      e-wa        — Eastern Washington (sibling of se-wa, not part of the puw chain)
        wsu       — WSU Pullman campus  (live)
    id            — Idaho
      n-id        — Northern Idaho (Moscow, Lewiston, Clearwater area)
        lws       — ID-side local scope
        uofi      — University of Idaho, Moscow campus  (proposed)
    or            — Oregon
      c-or        — Central Oregon
        pdt       — Wallowa County  (NE Oregon)

palouse is listed as a separate entry alongside the geographic chain — it isn't inherited automatically from the state tags.

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 Pullman repeater simultaneously serves puw, se-wa, wa, pnw, west, and palouse from a single def. Campus scopes work the same way: wsu nests under e-wa (WSU Pullman, live), and uofi nests under n-id (University of Idaho, Moscow — proposed). This keeps campus mesh traffic on campus without flooding the broader palouse scope.

We always plan on keeping an open door to interregion coordination — helping our bordering repeaters carry a neighboring scope if they want us to help relay, sharing observers, and whatever else being a good neighbor looks like in practice.

The Palouse

palouse is the shared cross-border scope for the Palouse as one community — spanning Whitman, Asotin, and Garfield counties on the WA side, the Moscow/Lewiston/Clearwater corridor on the Idaho side, and the eastern Oregon corner. It sits alongside the state tags (wa, id, or) as a peer under pnw. Each state also carries its own narrower local scope: puw (WA, under se-wa), lws (ID, under n-id), pdt (OR, under c-or).

Everyday repeaters do not carry alw, psc, or geg — those good-neighbor tags toward Walla Walla, the Tri-Cities, and Spokane are reserved for high-site repeaters near those borders. High sites with real reach across the WA/ID line should also consider carrying the adjacent state's regional scopes (wa / se-wa / e-wa or id / n-id) in addition to their own.

Pullman's service area is understood to extend beyond Whitman County to also cover Asotin and Garfield counties, which currently have no repeaters of their own.

Southeastern Washington

Community convention in southeastern Washington has diverged from the flat e-wa grouping: e-wa covers Eastern Washington broadly — east of the Cascades — while Walla Walla and the Tri-Cities have adopted se-wa (Southeastern Washington) as their own regional identifier — a sibling of e-wa directly under wa, not nested beneath it. Walla Walla (alw) and the Tri-Cities (psc) carry west / pnw / wa / se-wa plus their own metro tag.

Pullman also sits under se-wa alongside Walla Walla and the Tri-Cities — see The Palouse above for its cross-border tagging. This aligns with the ShrubSteppe SE-WA region proposal (revised 7/5/2026).

Palouse region tag reference

Each tag must be explicitly listed. When someone sends a message scoped to palouse, only repeaters that explicitly carry palouse will forward it — a node carrying wa but not palouse will drop it.

Full hierarchy — what each side carries

Washington-side

west                — Entire mesh (Western US / SW Canada)
  pnw               — Pacific Northwest
    palouse         — Cross-border shared scope (WA + ID + OR tri-state corner)
    wa              — Washington State
      se-wa         — Southeastern Washington (Pullman, Walla Walla, Tri-Cities)
        puw         — WA-side local scope  ← local scope
      e-wa          — Eastern Washington (sibling of se-wa, not part of the puw chain)
        wsu         — WSU Pullman campus (live)  ← campus nodes only, not standard repeater config

Idaho-side

west                — Entire mesh (Western US / SW Canada)
  pnw               — Pacific Northwest
    palouse         — Cross-border shared scope (WA + ID + OR tri-state corner)
    id              — Idaho
      n-id          — Northern Idaho (Idaho County to the Canadian border)
        lws         — ID-side local scope  ← local scope
        uofi        — University of Idaho, Moscow campus (proposed)  ← campus nodes only, not standard repeater config

Oregon-side

west                — Entire mesh (Western US / SW Canada)
  pnw               — Pacific Northwest
    palouse         — Cross-border shared scope (WA + ID + OR tri-state corner)
    or              — Oregon
      c-or          — Central Oregon
        pdt         — Wallowa County (NE Oregon)  ← local scope

Nodes on a peak, hilltop, tower, or ridgeline that straddles a region boundary should consider carrying the bordering region tag(s) as well.

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.

Go deeper

• Repeater Setup — Step 6 — configure region tags on your node
• Palouse Mesh Regions Proposal — our full proposal including coordination paths, naming discussion, and interactive map
• A huge thank you to Adam Gessaman for all of his help building the structure behind the PNW region hierarchy described here.

We'd love to hear input and feedback on the regions — reach us on Facebook or Signal.

Additional Regions

Region scopes don't have to be geographic. wsu and uofi show that a scope tag can just as easily follow a campus or organization as it can a county line — the naming convention is ours to define, not fixed by MeshCore itself.

If you're already running a scope for a local area or purpose that isn't covered on this page — a neighborhood, a group, a campus, anything with its own community — let us know. We're glad to work with you on adding it to the documented hierarchy above. Reach out on Facebook or Signal.