Draft proposal · updated November 1, 2026

MeshCore region scopes for Texas

The whole proposal: which scopes exist, how they nest, which counties go where, and the questions still open.

Hierarchy

The scopes

us-south and us-gc are top-level scopes alongside us, for wide-area traffic, with names that match what groups in neighboring states already use. us-tx sits under us. Under us-tx are five regions that together cover every county, and each metro sits under the region it's in.

Scope	Name	Covers
us-south	South	Wide-area communication across southern states, shared with neighboring states' meshes.
us-gc	Gulf Coast	Wide-area communication along the Gulf Coast, shared with neighboring states' meshes.
us	United States	The whole country.
us-tx	Texas	All of Texas.
us-tx-north	North	The Metroplex and the Red River towns. 29 counties.
us-tx-dfw	Dallas–Fort Worth	The DFW metro plus its edge counties, made up of Dallas and Fort Worth below. 22 counties.
us-tx-dal	Dallas	Collin, Dallas, Denton, Ellis, Hunt, Kaufman, Rockwall · edge: Fannin, Grayson, Henderson, Navarro, Van Zandt
us-tx-ftw	Fort Worth	Johnson, Parker, Tarrant, Wise · edge: Cooke, Hill, Hood, Jack, Palo Pinto, Somervell
us-tx-east	East	Piney Woods plus the Gulf Coast from Galveston to the Golden Triangle. 53 counties.
us-tx-hou	Houston	Austin, Brazoria, Chambers, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, Liberty, Montgomery, San Jacinto, Waller · edge: Colorado, Grimes, Matagorda, Walker, Washington, Wharton
us-tx-central	Central	The I-35 corridor from Waco through Austin to San Antonio, Hill Country and Brazos Valley. 47 counties.
us-tx-aus	Austin	Bastrop, Caldwell, Hays, Travis, Williamson · edge: Blanco, Burnet, Lee, Milam
us-tx-sat	San Antonio	Atascosa, Bandera, Bexar, Comal, Guadalupe, Kendall, Medina, Wilson · edge: Frio, Gillespie, Gonzales, Karnes, Kerr
us-tx-south	South	Coastal Bend, the border and the Rio Grande Valley. 35 counties.
us-tx-west	West	Panhandle, South Plains, Permian Basin, Big Bend and Big Country, Amarillo to El Paso. 90 counties.

How the metros were drawn

Each metro starts from its OMB Metropolitan Statistical Area counties (Dallas and Fort Worth use the two MSA divisions) and adds the outlying counties along its edge, so repeaters on the fringe join the metro instead of only their region. The edge counties are a first pass and easy to adjust.

El Paso, the Valley and other areas without a metro scope use their region until a local community asks for one.

Counties at a region's edge

Every county belongs to exactly one region, and the core counties of each metro are never split between regions. Each metro sits under the region that holds its core counties, but a few of its edge counties fall in a neighboring region: Van Zandt, Henderson and Navarro with Dallas, Hill with Fort Worth, Frio and Karnes with San Antonio, and Grimes, Washington and Colorado with Houston.

A repeater there carries its own region plus the metro's full chain. A Henderson County repeater carries us-tx-east, then us-tx-north, us-tx-dfw and us-tx-dal.

Rules

What can sit under a region

Only the five statewide regions sit directly under us-tx, and together they cover every county. Every other Texas scope sits under the region it's in, or under a metro in that region like us-tx-dal under us-tx-dfw, and has to be one of these. Areas that don't fit stay in their region until they do.

A major metro area

A metro scope named for the whole area, such as us-tx-dfw.

A grouping of IATA codes

Neighboring airport-code areas under one scope, such as a future us-tx-rgv grouping the Harlingen (HRL), McAllen (MFE) and Brownsville (BRO) areas.

A single IATA code

One city or area named by its airport code, such as us-tx-hou or us-tx-aus.

Flat, lowercase names

Use only a–z, 0–9 and -. Every scope below us-tx is named us-tx- plus one short code: a region name (us-tx-north), a metro or grouping code (us-tx-dfw) or an IATA code (us-tx-hou). The name never spells out the full chain, so Dallas is us-tx-dal even though it sits under us-tx-dfw and us-tx-north. The hierarchy comes from the parent, not the name. Above us-tx, names match the ones neighboring meshes already use (us-south, us-gc). Names have to be unique across the mesh.

Every repeater carries its full ancestry

Firmware matches traffic on each region's own key and never looks at the parent. A repeater with only us-tx-dal won't forward us-tx-dfw, us-tx-north or us-tx traffic, so each level needs its own region put.

Scope to your audience

Use the smallest scope that reaches the people you're talking to: local chat on a city scope, metro-wide traffic on us-tx-dfw, regional traffic on a region scope, and statewide traffic on us-tx. Bots should flood on a scope, never unscoped.

No airtime cost

Region names never go over the air. Packets carry only small transport codes derived from the region name.

Repeater configs

What it looks like on a repeater

Every Texas repeater carries us, us-south, us-gc and us-tx, plus the one region its county is in. A rural repeater outside any metro stops after its region.

Dallas

region put us
region put us-south
region put us-gc
region put us-tx us
region put us-tx-north us-tx
region put us-tx-dfw us-tx-north
region put us-tx-dal us-tx-dfw
region save

San Antonio

region put us
region put us-south
region put us-gc
region put us-tx us
region put us-tx-central us-tx
region put us-tx-sat us-tx-central
region save

West Texas, no metro

region put us
region put us-south
region put us-gc
region put us-tx us
region put us-tx-west us-tx
region save

These are for firmware 1.15.0 and newer. On 1.14.x and earlier, add region allowf <name> after each region put. The configurator writes the list for your ZIP code and firmware.

Keep unscoped traffic for now

Unscoped traffic uses the reserved root region *, and repeaters allow flood on it by default. Don't remove or deny flood on * on any repeater yet. Many nodes run older firmware or haven't set a region scope, and they still depend on unscoped flood. Removing it is a decision for a later date, once scopes are widely adopted.

Scoping per channel

The sender chooses the scope

Repeaters carry the region tags, but companions don't hold them. Instead, each channel can have its own scope (Set Region Scope on the channel), and there's an app-wide default in Settings under Network Settings.

Public

us-tx or unscoped (*)

General chat that anyone in the state should be able to see.

#weather

Local metro or city, such as us-tx-dfw or us-tx-aus

Alerts for Houston aren't useful in Dallas.

#bot

Local metro or city, such as us-tx-hou or us-tx-sat

Bot replies and automated posts stay near the people using them.

Not every area needs its own scope

Most conversation can stay in a metro scope, a region scope or us-tx. An area only needs its own scope once it starts seeing excessive unwanted traffic from elsewhere. Until then, it's simpler to use its region scope and add a local scope later if it's needed.

Still undecided

Open questions

These are the parts that need input most. If you have a view on any of them, say so.

1
Aligning with neighbors
us-south and us-gc are already in use by mesh groups in neighboring states, and every Texas repeater carries both. Those groups should confirm the names and intended use match.
2
Uppercase or lowercase
The original ask used DFW. The convention is lowercase, so this draft uses us-tx-dfw.
3
Edge counties
Are the right outlying counties included? Bell (Killeen–Temple) and Jefferson (Beaumont) have no metro scope yet and use their region, Central and East.
4
Next metros
Likely candidates are El Paso (us-tx-elp), the Rio Grande Valley (us-tx-rgv) and Corpus Christi (us-tx-crp). Should us-tx-hou get sub-regions?
5
Ratification
Who signs off on new scopes, so names stay unique and agreed?

Open an issue on GitHub