This may be a little technical for many, but here goes.... when a packet travels meshcore network it can use direct routing where individual repeaters are included in the packet OR "flood" where any repeater that hears your packet will relay it.

Additionally we can add a "scope" to the packet. So I can specify that a packet only bounce around within a region such as "us-sc" or "us-sc-flo". So if my peers in North Carolina don't want my "us-sc" scoped packets they can opt out of that region.

So there's a software setting that says if a scope is NOT specified, we can limit the number of hops. For example, a station in Kentucky sends an unscoped packet and it arrives near my town with 15 hops. If I have set my repeater to only relay packets with 10 hops or less, that packet is NOT relayed into my town.

So by specifying a max unscoped hop count and/or specifying a region to relay, I can effecively limit the amount of traffic in my local area. This will allow for regional and multi state directed commnucations but not allow a spammy free for all. The philosophy is the keep the air as free as possible to allow my local guys great communications.