Lightning Mesh

built 8 min verified 723b308 (2026-09-19)

How the house mesh works

Lightning Mesh is several layers that share a box. Mixing them up is the usual source of confusion.

Status: built. This is how a live house fleet behaves today.

Two Wi-Fi names

Name you see Who joins it Purpose
⚡ or Lightning Mesh (or your rename) Phones, laptops, IoT Client access point. This is the house Wi-Fi.
mjolnir-mesh Routers only Backhaul. 802.11s. Phones cannot usefully join it.

Association to the client name is not membership of a guild and does not write identity logs. The backhaul is how routers talk to each other when they are not on the same ethernet.

Addresses you will see

Kind Looks like Meaning
Your device 10.42.61.23 DHCP from the router you associated to. Each router owns its own /24.
That router's LAN gateway 10.42.61.1 hello.mesh and LAN services on this box
Router management (overlay) 10.254.x.y Derived from the router's node id. SSH here once the mesh is up
Recovery ethernet 192.168.1.1 Only when you plug a computer into a LAN port and the overlay is dead

Two people in the same room can have different 10.42. prefixes if they landed on different routers. That is expected. babel routes between them.

Do not add 192.168.1.1/24 onto a live gateway's br-lan as a second address while it is already serving 10.42.x.1. That combination has produced a "lease but no ping" black hole for phones.

What talks to what

phone  --client Wi-Fi-->  router A (10.42.A.1)
                              |
                         802.11s backhaul  (mjolnir-mesh)
                              |
                         router B (10.42.B.1)  --WAN-->  existing house internet
                              |
                         overlay 10.254/16  (SSH, gossip, .mesh names)
  • Radio is plumbing. The product is the routed overlay plus the directory of people and services.
  • Client LAN segments are not bridged across routers. Broadcast stays on one box. That is why printers and Chromecast discovery that depend on LAN broadcast may need a published .mesh name instead.
  • If any one router has a working WAN and gateway=auto, the whole mesh can use that internet. If the uplink dies, sharing stops by itself.

The service mesh (directory)

Every router runs a small front desk (mjolnir-hello) at http://hello.mesh. Behind it, mjolnir-meshd gossips a CRDT: node names, who is around, and published services.

Piece What you see
People Optional IdentiKeys that introduced themselves
Services .mesh names (a chat app, a file drop, a printer)
Routers Boxes in this mesh and which ones hear each other

A service is not "installed on the cloud." Someone published it from a router (or an app claimed a name). It resolves on every node. If the publisher goes away, the listing ages out (about 90 seconds after it stops renewing).

Apps at https://something.mesh use certificates the mesh made. Browsers warn because .mesh is not a public internet name. Continue only for names you opened from hello.mesh. Details: Find services and Publish a service.

What is not built yet

Planned Today
House owner / admin roles in the UI SSH keys and whoever can reach the box
Private resident Wi-Fi by default Open client SSID unless you set a password at flash time
Membership gate for adding routers Matching radio settings is enough to join the backhaul
Seamless roam while on a call You may get a new 10.42. address when you walk

Treat those as design, not as knobs on the box you just plugged in.

Next: Administer the house.

Next: Administer the house →