Feature Request: Scope-based Low Hop Flood Option for Repeaters #1860
Description
Context
Currently, scope configuration on repeaters only allows two options:
- Flood Allow
- Flood Deny
This works well for enabling or completely blocking propagation, but there is no mechanism to limit the propagation distance of a specific scope.
In some scenarios, fully allowing or fully denying flood is too coarse.
Idea
It could be useful to introduce an additional flood mode for scopes, such as:
- Flood Allow
- Flood Deny
- Flood Local (Low Hop)
The idea would be that when a repeater initializes a flood for a specific scope (for example local), it sets a reduced hop limit instead of the default global flood value.
Since the first repeater effectively defines the initial flood hop limit, this could integrate naturally into the current architecture without changing the general flood logic.
Use Case
The main use case would be a universal local scope that always limits communication to the immediate surrounding mesh area.
For example:
When traveling to a new city (e.g. Paris), a user might want to reach only people in their immediate neighborhood — without knowing which specific regional scopes are used there.
Instead of researching which scopes exist in that city, a user could simply use the local scope, and the repeater would restrict the flood to a low hop count (for example 2–4 hops).
This would effectively create an automatic “nearby only” communication mode.
Other example scenarios include:
- Mountain-to-valley setups where communication should stay regional
- Temporary event usage
- Reducing unnecessary backbone traffic
- Controlled mesh segmentation without separate networks
Goal
The intention is not to fragment the mesh, but to provide a controlled propagation option that sits between full flood and full deny.
This could make scopes more flexible and improve usability for regional and mobile scenarios.