Using experimental LoRaWAN address space in a production environnment

ChirpStack Network Server
1

In LoRaWAN there is the concept of “address space”, where nodes on a network are assigned a particular address depending on the type of network server being used. This is described in this page of TTN.

The experimental space uses addresses starting with 0x00/0x01/0x02/0x03, which is what loraserver uses. Since these addresses are non-unique and they are validated using a MIC, collisions are avoided. What I am wondering is why there is a concept of address space in the first place. Does it even matter? Would it be a problem in the long term to use an “experimental” address space in production environment?

Thanks,

2

As far as I’m aware of, the prefix only matters for roaming. E.g. by looking at the prefix, the network-server is able to forward the data to an other network in case of a different prefix. See also the LoRaWAN Backend Interfaces specification.

3

So in theory, if one uses the experimental address space, loraserver can’t be used for a roaming system.