Mixing 8-Channel and 16-Channel for EU868

Hello Chirpstack community,

We are currently using Chirpstack v4 for a customer setup and they are primarily using the 16-Channel Tektelic Kona Macro gateway with the Chirpstack MQTT Forwarder for their private network.

In the future, they also intend to extend their network with smaller, simpler 8-Channel Gateways, e.g. Kerlink Wirnet iStation.

These 8-Channel Gateways will either use the Chirpstack Gateway Bridge or the Chirpstack MQTT Forwarder, depending on what is better supported.

My question is now how I should configure the EU868 Region file?

  • Should I create a new region file for EU868 for 16-channel gateways and use the default EU868 region file for 8-channel gateways?
  • Do I need separate MQTT-Broker and/or Gateway Bridge instances?

Could some please provide me with some general best-practices?

Many thanks in advance!

you have setup different regions:

the mqtt-forwarder need to configure the right prefix.
if the mqtt-forwarder isn’t installed on the GW you will need an instance for every region.

Hi Landinger,

Thank you for your reply.

So if I understood correctly, its not necessary to setup a new MQTT broker, simply configure a new EU868 region file for 8-channel gateways and configure the MQTT-Forwarder on the gateways to use the correct MQTT-topic for this region file?

If the Chirpstack Gateway Bridge is used, it seems you can configure only a single region per Gateway Bridge instance, so I would need separate instances for 8-channel and 16-channel gateways.

Is this correct?

yes the mqtt-forwarder only need the correct prefix:
[mqtt]
topic_prefix=“eu868_8”
server=“tcp://x.x.x.x:1883”
It has to be the “Region ID” of your region file

you will need separate instances if your GW doesn’t support a mqtt-forworder and if you use the chirpstack-gateway-bridge at CS site

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