Bandwidth considerations

Using broadcast repeaters in a network reduces the overall network data throughput as each repeater must buffer an entire packet before retransmitting it. For example: if the destination is within range of the transmitter and the packet is 32-bytes long, the transmission takes 12 ms on a device operating at 115,200 baud. If the same packet must propagate through two repeaters, it takes 12 ms to arrive at the first repeater, 12 ms to get to the second and a final 12 ms to reach the destination for a total of 36 ms. Accounting for UART transfer times (~1 ms/byte at 9600 baud), the time for a server to send a 32-byte query and receive a 32-byte response is about 200 ms, allowing for five polls per second. With the two repeaters in the path, the same query/response sequence would take about 500 ms for two polls per second.

Generally, network throughput decreases by a factor of 1/(R+1), with R representing the number of repeaters between the source and destination.