Meshtastic uses naive flooding, which is fine for sparse networks (ie you and your three friends out hiking), but which doesn’t scale well at all.

I'm genuinely interested in learning more about the shortcomings of meshtastic if you have a link to share. Groups like the Anarchist Black Cross seem really supportive of the tech for disaster situations. Even Benn Jordan claimed it played an important role during the floods in NC

My understanding is that it relates to the flood routing in meshtastic. I haven't heard a real-world failure example, but another comment on this post mentioned defcon being a case (I don't know anything about that).

I did find this assessment:

https://www.disk91.com/2024/technology/lora/critical-analysi...

And here is Meshtastics explanation of the rationale behind 'managed flood routing':

https://meshtastic.org/blog/why-meshtastic-uses-managed-floo...

I think I first heard about the differences from Andy Kirby, one of the MeshCore creators: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNWf0Mh2fJw

Fair, meshcore is supposedly better for that.

Personally I just using it as a transport layer for Reticulum. Slow and finicky but easier to link distant nodes.

I'd really like to learn more about Reticulum. Are you using a specific app on top of it? Do you have a meaningful user network you communicate with, or is it still more just proving out the system?