Seems like a lot of people on meshmap are using medium fast for some reason. At least in California.
I don’t know what their specific reasons are, but looking at the meshtastic docs and comparing longfast to mediumfast, they both use the same bandwidth and amount of redundancy (for interference protection) but mediumfast transmits faster than longfast, reducing its range in exchange for faster transmissions, which also clears up the airwaves as people spend less time transmitting - and also increases the capacity of the airwaves (data rate).
One reason I can think of that you would do this is if it’s a congested area where there is no shortage of nodes to retransmit, so you might not mind shortening your range if it means less congestion and faster transmissions.
That’s just my guess though.
Yeah, when mesh utilization gets too high, the mesh starts having issues because radios can’t find an opening to transmit. I’ve seen a lot of the meshtastic subs for certain cities calling for everyone to switch to medium fast when utilization gets high.
I also keep my pocket mode on client-mute because there are usually much better positioned nodes around to repeat traffic, and mine was just adding to the congestion.
When your area’s mesh starts getting good they generally move to MF. While it’s still sparse generally they’ll stay on LF.
The Mesh is prone to overloading and MF helps with that while also being faster than LF.
Chick to see if there’s a local Meshtastic group and what setting they recommend. https://meshtastic.org/docs/community/local-groups/
For example, the Bay Area mesh recommends MF. https://bayme.sh/docs/getting-started/recommended-settings/
