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Nevada Meshtastic Is Moving to Medium Fast

· 4 min read
Ben Allfree
Ben Allfree
MeshEnvy Founder

The local and regional Meshtastic community in Nevada has grown enough that we are moving our Meshtastic repeaters to Medium Fast (MEDIUM_FAST). That is the preset we now recommend for anyone joining the MeshEnvy Meshtastic layer. If you run Meshtastic in Reno, Carson, or anywhere you can reach our community repeaters, this is the setting to match.

Why Medium Fast now​

For years, Long Fast was the sensible Meshtastic default. Sparse nodes, long airtime, maximum reach. That still describes a lot of rural Nevada. But the basins and corridors around Reno and Carson are not sparse anymore. More nodes on the same preset means more channel utilization. Slower presets spend more time on the air for each packet, and congested meshes feel it.

Medium Fast sits at about 3.5 kbps with a 250 kHz bandwidth and spreading factor 9. That is roughly three times the throughput of Long Fast while keeping most of the range you need in our terrain. The broader Meshtastic project is also discussing Medium Fast as a possible future default. As the mesh grows, having more bandwidth per hop helps everyone.

We are not abandoning Long Fast everywhere overnight. Remote repeaters and long-haul links may stay on slower presets where every decibel counts. For the Meshtastic community mesh we actively coordinate in northern and central Nevada, Medium Fast is the new baseline.

What to set on your radio​

If you are flashing or reconfiguring a node to join MeshEnvy-coordinated Meshtastic repeaters:

  • Region: US (915 MHz)
  • Modem preset: Medium Fast (MEDIUM_FAST)
  • Primary channel: Leave the name blank (default). With the default PSK, the firmware derives the channel label from your preset. You do not need to type MediumFast manually.
  • Matching nodes: Every node must share the same preset, channel name, and PSK. Blank matches blank. An explicit name like MediumFast only works if every node uses that exact spelling.

From the CLI:

meshtastic --set lora.region US --set lora.modem_preset MEDIUM_FAST

If your radio is still on Long Fast, you will not hear the Medium Fast mesh until you switch the preset.

Check your frequency slot​

Changing the modem preset is not always enough. On some clients, especially Android, the frequency slot is derived from the name on your primary channel (slot 0). If that channel still has a custom name from an old setup, the radio may stay on the wrong slot even after you pick Medium Fast.

For US 915 MHz, Medium Fast uses frequency slot 45 (913.125 MHz). Long Fast is slot 20 (906.875 MHz). If you switch presets but your node goes quiet, open LoRa settings and confirm the slot. Set it to 45 manually if the app did not move you there on its own.

The cleanest fix is usually to make primary channel 0 match the mesh: leave the name blank with the default PSK, or rename it to exactly MediumFast with the default PSK. If you keep a private name on slot 0, you will need to set the frequency slot yourself.

From the CLI:

meshtastic --set lora.channel_num 45

Thanks to Spider and others in the community who flagged this. It has tripped up more than a few people during preset migrations.

What this means for repeaters​

We will move MeshEnvy Meshtastic repeaters to Medium Fast on a rolling basis. We also maintain repeaters in key locations according to community requests, volunteer deployments, and what the terrain actually needs. If you host a community repeater that feeds our layer, match the preset and channel settings above so your node stays in sync with the rest of the mesh.

Still protocol agnostic​

This post is about Meshtastic settings, not a change in direction for MeshEnvy as a whole. We support Meshtastic, MeshCore, and we continue to experiment with Reticulum. We are a protocol-agnostic organization. Meshtastic and MeshCore both have real value for different groups.

MeshCore remains our first-tier backbone on the Silver Triangle, officially supported by MeshEnvy and our partners. Our main MeshCore community channel is #meshenvy, alongside the default Public channel. Meshtastic is the flexible, community-driven layer that excels where people and nodes move.

Whether you prefer Meshtastic, MeshCore, Reticulum, or something you are building yourself, this is still a mesh-loving nonprofit focused on pragmatism: what works best for Nevada, for emergency and backup communications, and for the community at large.

If you are new, start at Get Started. Pick US915 hardware, choose the protocol that matches how you actually use the mesh, and say hello on Discord once you are on the air.