LoRa, LoRaWAN, Sigfox, Meshtastic — a family tree, not a fight
Most posts in this corner of the internet pick a winner. This one is the family tree — what each of the six technologies actually is, and where each one tends to fit, before the series picks one to dig into.
If you read three "LoRaWAN vs Meshtastic" posts in a row you will come away convinced that one of them is going to lose a fight to the death, and that the author of each post has already placed bets. This is not a useful frame. It is also wrong about LoRa, which is not in the fight at all because LoRa is not a network — LoRa is a way of waving a sine wave around in the air.
Let's do this properly. Six things, what each of them is, and when you'd reach for it.
LoRa is not a network
The most common confusion in this whole space, made worse by Semtech's marketing, is that LoRa and LoRaWAN are two different things, and you keep meeting people who think they're synonyms.
LoRa is the modulation
- A chirp spread spectrum scheme patented by Semtech.
- Implemented in the SX12xx family of radio chips.
- Decodes well below the noise floor — that's the whole magic.
- Runs in unlicensed ISM bands (868 MHz EU, 915 MHz US).
- Knows nothing about networks, routing, encryption, or devices.
LoRaWAN is the network
- A MAC layer and architecture that uses LoRa underneath.
- Defines join procedures, encryption keys, downlink scheduling.
- Maintained by the LoRa Alliance, not Semtech.
- Star-of-stars topology — devices, gateways, network server.
- What people actually mean 90% of the time when they say "LoRa".
Two consequences. First, you can build a LoRa application that is not LoRaWAN — Phase 1 of this series does exactly that, with two boards pinging each other directly, no network server, no join procedure. Second, Meshtastic is also LoRa-but-not-LoRaWAN: it uses the same Semtech chips and the same ISM band, with a completely different protocol on top.
This distinction matters because most "LoRa range" claims you'll see online are quoting the modulation and not the network, and most "LoRa security" claims are quoting LoRaWAN's MAC and not the modulation. Knowing which layer you're talking about is half the job.
The family tree
The six players, one paragraph each
1. LoRa P2P (the modulation, used directly)
You write firmware that talks to the SX1276 or SX1262 chip directly, two boards exchange packets, no network in the middle. Useful for telemetry between two specific endpoints you control, mesh experimentation, learning what spreading factor and bandwidth physically do to a packet. Not useful for any deployment where devices join, leave, or roam.
2. LoRaWAN
LoRa modulation, plus a star-of-stars topology — devices talk to gateways, gateways talk to a Network Server, the Network Server hands payloads to your Application Server. Devices are encrypted end-to-end with two keys. The LoRa Alliance maintains the spec. You can pay to join a public network like The Things Network, or you can self-host the entire stack with ChirpStack on a Raspberry Pi, which is what we're doing in Phase 4 of this series. Best at low-power, infrequent uplinks from many devices to a few gateways. Worst at anything chatty — the EU868 1% duty cycle bites quickly.
3. Sigfox
Ultra-narrowband DBPSK modulation in the same ISM bands as LoRa, but a completely different way of waving the sine wave. Operator-owned: there is one Sigfox network per country, and you pay per device per year for connectivity. Originally a French company that went into administration in 2022 and was acquired by UnaBiz; the network is still running and in the UK is operated by Heliot Europe under the UnaBiz banner. Each uplink is at most 12 bytes, you get 140 of them per device per day, and downlinks are limited to 4 messages of 8 bytes per day. That sounds anaemic until you realise it's enough for almost every "is the gate open / is the bin full / is the cow still in the field" application.
4. Mioty
Another sub-GHz ISM technology, completely separate from LoRa. Standardised by ETSI as TS 103 357 in 2018, originally out of Fraunhofer. Mioty uses telegram splitting (TSMA) — chops each uplink into many small radio bursts spread across time and frequency, so any single interfering burst only damages a fraction of the message. The result is a network that holds up unusually well in noisy environments. Most of the deployments I've read about are industrial — factories, chemical plants, trackside infrastructure — places where LoRa's collision behaviour gets uncomfortable. Not on my bench, no commercial UK presence I can find, and all of this is from spec-reading rather than packets I've sent. Mentioned here so the family tree isn't selectively quiet about a real ETSI standard.
5. NB-IoT and LTE-M
A different beast entirely. Both are 3GPP standards on licensed cellular spectrum — SIM cards, operator billing, carrier infrastructure. The radio is narrowband and power-optimised compared to plain LTE, but the technology is fundamentally cellular. Modules are more expensive, modules-with-SIMs even more so, and battery life is months-to-years rather than years-to-decade. Reach for these when you need devices that roam outside one site (LTE-M handles handover; NB-IoT does not), when you need carrier-grade reliability for compliance reasons, or when the per-device cost is not your bottleneck.
6. Meshtastic
LoRa modulation, mesh routing on top, no network server, no operator. Each node is both a device and a router. Messages flood the mesh with a deterministic algorithm that throttles re-broadcasts based on signal strength, so a network of ten nodes doesn't melt itself. Channels are PSK-encrypted with a shared key. Best at small groups of people in connectivity dead zones who want to text each other, hike-and-talk scenarios, single-site deployments where you'd rather scatter cheap nodes than mount one perfect gateway. Worst at scale beyond a few dozen nodes per channel and at applications where battery life of years matters more than mesh reachability.
Where the rest of this series goes
The plan is LoRaWAN-first, because that's what 70% of the deployments I'm interested in will end up using. LoRa P2P is the on-ramp — Phase 1 starts there because the on-ramp builds intuition. Meshtastic comes at the end, partly because the nodes I've ordered haven't arrived yet, and partly because by then we'll have measured enough actual range and packet-loss numbers from a single-gateway LoRaWAN setup to make the comparison post honest rather than vibes-based.
Sigfox doesn't get its own phase. It deserves a fair mention here because it is too often dismissed by people who haven't looked at it lately, but I don't have a Sigfox use case on hand and don't intend to invent one to fill a post. Mioty is the same story for different reasons: a real ETSI standard, but no hardware on my bench and no UK service I can find — it's in the family tree because honesty demands it, not because I have packets to show. NB-IoT also doesn't get a phase, mostly because nothing on the bench supports it. If anyone reading this has an NB-IoT, LTE-M, or Mioty module they want a second opinion on, the inbox is open.
Next week, the soldering iron comes out. Two boards, 868 MHz, no LoRaWAN. The first ping.
Sources — LoRa Alliance · What is LoRaWAN · Semtech SX1276 · Meshtastic mesh algorithm · Sigfox technology · Heliot Europe · GSMA NB-IoT primer