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@fifieldt fifieldt commented Jul 29, 2025

The original intent of NeighborInfo was that when a NeighbourInfo was sent all of the nodes that saw it would reply with NeighbourInfo. So, NeighbourInfo was sent even if there were no hop-zero nodes in the NodeDB.

Since 2023, when this was implemented, our understanding of running city-wide meshes has improved substantially. We have taken steps to reduce the impact of NeighborInfo over LoRa.

This change aligns with those ideas: we will now only send NeighborInfo if we have some neighbors to contribute.

The impact of this change is that a node must first see another directly connected node in another packet type before NeighborInfo is sent. Nodes will, however, receive the regular periodic broadcast of NeighborInfo, and will be able to send NeighborInfo if it has at least 1 neighbor.

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  • I have tested that my proposed changes behave as described.
  • I have tested that my proposed changes do not cause any obvious regressions on the following devices:
    • Heltec (Lora32) V3
    • LilyGo T-Deck
    • LilyGo T-Beam
    • RAK WisBlock 4631
    • Seeed Studio T-1000E tracker card
    • Other (please specify below)

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fifieldt commented Jul 29, 2025

@caveman99 , as the original author, does this seem sane to you?

Picked this up when we found a Heltec V3 that was stuck in a loop sending 0-neighbour neighbourinfo packets to our MQTT server. Thousands of them.

@fifieldt fifieldt added the enhancement New feature or request label Jul 29, 2025
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Idea sounds good to me, left a comment though.

This means that a node with no neighbors is no longer able to trigger other nodes to broadcast NeighborInfo.

This shouldn’t be the case already. Nodes only periodically send NeighborInfo, not triggered by other nodes; wantReplies is always false. They will only rebroadcast other nodes’ NeighborInfo.
In one of the alpha releases some time ago there was a bug that when the broadcast interval was not set, it would broadcast it as fast as possible.

@fifieldt fifieldt force-pushed the mqtt-investigation branch from 61b0f13 to 0a5263a Compare July 29, 2025 11:07
The original intent of NeighborInfo was that when a NeighbourInfo
was sent all of the nodes that saw it would reply with NeighbourInfo.
So, NeighbourInfo was sent even if there were no hop-zero nodes in
the NodeDB.

Since 2023, when this was implemented, our understanding of running city-wide
meshes has improved substantially. We have taken steps to reduce the impact
of NeighborInfo over LoRa.

This change aligns with those ideas: we will now only send NeighborInfo
if we have some neighbors to contribute.

The impact of this change is that a node must first see another directly
connected node in another packet type before NeighborInfo is sent. This means
that a node with no neighbors is no longer able to trigger other nodes
to broadcast NeighborInfo. It will, however, receive the regular periodic
broadcast of NeighborInfo, and will be able to send NeighborInfo if it
has at least 1 neighbor.
@fifieldt fifieldt force-pushed the mqtt-investigation branch from e906c39 to 4712102 Compare August 28, 2025 23:31
@thebentern thebentern merged commit b0e8321 into meshtastic:master Aug 28, 2025
67 checks passed
thebentern added a commit that referenced this pull request Aug 29, 2025
* Merge pull request #7777 from meshtastic/create-pull-request/bump-version

Bump release version

* Only send Neighbours if we have some to send. (#7493)

* Only send Neighbours if we have some to send.

The original intent of NeighborInfo was that when a NeighbourInfo
was sent all of the nodes that saw it would reply with NeighbourInfo.
So, NeighbourInfo was sent even if there were no hop-zero nodes in
the NodeDB.

Since 2023, when this was implemented, our understanding of running city-wide
meshes has improved substantially. We have taken steps to reduce the impact
of NeighborInfo over LoRa.

This change aligns with those ideas: we will now only send NeighborInfo
if we have some neighbors to contribute.

The impact of this change is that a node must first see another directly
connected node in another packet type before NeighborInfo is sent. This means
that a node with no neighbors is no longer able to trigger other nodes
to broadcast NeighborInfo. It will, however, receive the regular periodic
broadcast of NeighborInfo, and will be able to send NeighborInfo if it
has at least 1 neighbor.

* Include all the things

* AvOid memleak

* We don't gotTime if time is 2019. (#7772)

There are certain GPS chips that have a hard-coded time in firmware
that they will return before lock. We set our own hard-coded time,
BUILD_EPOCH, that should be newer and use the comparison to not set
a bad time.

In #7261 we introduced
the RTCSetResult and improved it in #7375 .

However, the original try-fix left logic in GPS.cpp that could
still result in broadcasting the bad time.

Further, as part of our fix we cleared the GPS buffer if we didn't
get a good time. The mesh was hurting at the time, so this was a reasonable
approach. However, given time tends to come in when we're trying to get
early lock, this had the potential side effect of throwing away valuable
information to get position lock.

This change reverses the clearBuffer and changes the logic so if time
is not set it will not be broadcast.

Fixes #7771
Fixes #7750

---------

Co-authored-by: Tom Fifield <tom@tomfifield.net>
alexl83 pushed a commit to alexl83/firmware that referenced this pull request Sep 2, 2025
* Only send Neighbours if we have some to send.

The original intent of NeighborInfo was that when a NeighbourInfo
was sent all of the nodes that saw it would reply with NeighbourInfo.
So, NeighbourInfo was sent even if there were no hop-zero nodes in
the NodeDB.

Since 2023, when this was implemented, our understanding of running city-wide
meshes has improved substantially. We have taken steps to reduce the impact
of NeighborInfo over LoRa.

This change aligns with those ideas: we will now only send NeighborInfo
if we have some neighbors to contribute.

The impact of this change is that a node must first see another directly
connected node in another packet type before NeighborInfo is sent. This means
that a node with no neighbors is no longer able to trigger other nodes
to broadcast NeighborInfo. It will, however, receive the regular periodic
broadcast of NeighborInfo, and will be able to send NeighborInfo if it
has at least 1 neighbor.

* Include all the things

* AvOid memleak
mehow pushed a commit to mehow/meshtastic-firmware that referenced this pull request Sep 5, 2025
* Only send Neighbours if we have some to send.

The original intent of NeighborInfo was that when a NeighbourInfo
was sent all of the nodes that saw it would reply with NeighbourInfo.
So, NeighbourInfo was sent even if there were no hop-zero nodes in
the NodeDB.

Since 2023, when this was implemented, our understanding of running city-wide
meshes has improved substantially. We have taken steps to reduce the impact
of NeighborInfo over LoRa.

This change aligns with those ideas: we will now only send NeighborInfo
if we have some neighbors to contribute.

The impact of this change is that a node must first see another directly
connected node in another packet type before NeighborInfo is sent. This means
that a node with no neighbors is no longer able to trigger other nodes
to broadcast NeighborInfo. It will, however, receive the regular periodic
broadcast of NeighborInfo, and will be able to send NeighborInfo if it
has at least 1 neighbor.

* Include all the things

* AvOid memleak
pkoryzna pushed a commit to pkoryzna/meshtastic-firmware-why2025-carrier that referenced this pull request Sep 13, 2025
* Merge pull request meshtastic#7777 from meshtastic/create-pull-request/bump-version

Bump release version

* Only send Neighbours if we have some to send. (meshtastic#7493)

* Only send Neighbours if we have some to send.

The original intent of NeighborInfo was that when a NeighbourInfo
was sent all of the nodes that saw it would reply with NeighbourInfo.
So, NeighbourInfo was sent even if there were no hop-zero nodes in
the NodeDB.

Since 2023, when this was implemented, our understanding of running city-wide
meshes has improved substantially. We have taken steps to reduce the impact
of NeighborInfo over LoRa.

This change aligns with those ideas: we will now only send NeighborInfo
if we have some neighbors to contribute.

The impact of this change is that a node must first see another directly
connected node in another packet type before NeighborInfo is sent. This means
that a node with no neighbors is no longer able to trigger other nodes
to broadcast NeighborInfo. It will, however, receive the regular periodic
broadcast of NeighborInfo, and will be able to send NeighborInfo if it
has at least 1 neighbor.

* Include all the things

* AvOid memleak

* We don't gotTime if time is 2019. (meshtastic#7772)

There are certain GPS chips that have a hard-coded time in firmware
that they will return before lock. We set our own hard-coded time,
BUILD_EPOCH, that should be newer and use the comparison to not set
a bad time.

In meshtastic#7261 we introduced
the RTCSetResult and improved it in meshtastic#7375 .

However, the original try-fix left logic in GPS.cpp that could
still result in broadcasting the bad time.

Further, as part of our fix we cleared the GPS buffer if we didn't
get a good time. The mesh was hurting at the time, so this was a reasonable
approach. However, given time tends to come in when we're trying to get
early lock, this had the potential side effect of throwing away valuable
information to get position lock.

This change reverses the clearBuffer and changes the logic so if time
is not set it will not be broadcast.

Fixes meshtastic#7771
Fixes meshtastic#7750

---------

Co-authored-by: Tom Fifield <tom@tomfifield.net>
fifieldt added a commit that referenced this pull request Nov 8, 2025
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3 participants