[ramses0]

Huge +1 here! Work out scenario planning of Meshtastic/Meshcore with one of the GPT's and they top out at like ~100k users and like 10msg/sec or something ludicrously low.

At something like $100/node and 5000 nodes in a major metro (eg: Dallas) it's like a $500k investment and you're maxed out at low data rates and saturated topology.

That's 5k nodes in a (generous) 5 million population and ~500 square mile area. More like 9M people and 9000 square miles. (I checked, and that's "extended metroplex", but reasonable: Decatur to Cleburne, Weatherford to Kaufman).

At 5k nodes saturating an area, it's basically a rich persons toy very well suitable to remote or low-density areas, but NEVER for 1:1 saturation deployment in any sort of high density area.