Hi all, I would like some help understanding something about Chirpstack.
It is my understanding that with TTN community, an end device I have registered to an app can send and receive data through any gateway that is connected to TTN community. So basically I do not necessarily need my own gateway as long as someone in range of my device has one.
Am I correct in thinking that Chirpstack is not like that? If I register an end device on my Chirpstack server, the only way to get data from the device is if I setup my own gateway and connect it to my Chirpstack gateway bridge. I can not use other people’s gateways.
Also, about gateways, is this correct? : Without any special setup, the gateway will receive all lora packets it receives and send them to the chirpstack server it is linked to. The Chirpstack server will check if the packet was sent from a device registered on the chirpstack server. If the device isn’t registered, the packet is dropped, if it is registered, the data is stored and displayed.
Your questions are totally legitimate and obviously you are on the right track!
TTN is just like a huge ChirpStack server instance (though it might not be chirpstack based): by defaults, gateways added on the platform are public and as such they will relay every TTN registered devices packets it encounters to its platform.
CS just works like that too and, you guessed it, it will only work with gateways & devices registered on your chirpstack instance unless roaming is configured. If so, your chirpstack instance can then operate as a serving network server and/or a forwarding network server, depending on the configuration and roaming agreements with other networks.