Networking without the Internet#

Marlies Heijkoop

• Why: Not a technical deep dive and it says so upfront — but a thought-provoking look at a nationwide license-free LoRa mesh (Meshcore) that achieves near-countrywide coverage on cheap hardware, and a candid perspective piece on staying engaged with networking as a craft (from a founding architect at Gomibo/Belsimpel, speaking openly about burnout).
• What: An accessible overview of the Dutch Meshcore network: companions (end devices, e.g., nrf52-based Heltec T114) and solar-powered repeaters (Heltec v4, SenseCAP), packet characteristics (tiny, text-only, no delivery guarantees — "the Two Generals have nothing like TCP sequence numbers"), and an honest assessment of the flooding model (worse than an Ethernet hub — even the sender hears its own frame back). Practical uses are deliberately modest: Home Assistant integration, out-of-band "is it my house or is it Ziggo" checks, and last-resort communication. The talk's real argument: play with networks for fun to keep the flame burning.
• How: LoRa modulation giving long range at very low power and terrible SNR, with repeaters re-broadcasting everything they hear (no spanning tree — counter-intuitively it works). Concrete recommendations: flash "Dutch Meshcore" firmware, buy a companion-plus-repeater pair rather than a standalone cyberdeck, and there's an NLNOG channel on the mesh.
• Where applicable: Hobbyist/community infrastructure in the Netherlands specifically (Meshcore firmware variant, national radio settings), not production tooling — the speaker explicitly says you won't need this for monitoring prod. Worth it as a working example of an extreme-constraint mesh network and its emergent behavior.