[Feature Request]: CLIENT_BASE use private channel name to determine "favorite" node

[dzid26]

Platform

Cross-Platform

Description

Currently, CLIENT_BASE uses the Favorite flag to set allowed nodes for routing.
This has disadvantages:

• can't use node favoriting, tracking interesting nodes, or remote friends - related: [Bug]: CLIENT_BASE DMs should not auto-favorite #8556 [Feature Request]: Selecting CLIENT_BASE to remove favorite from nodes #8371 - admittedly, this could be part of a higher-level UI, not base firmware.
• opens possibility for transmissions to be "hijacked" by uneducated or troll neighbor nodes with a suboptimal signal strength [Bug]: CLIENT_BASE role unwanted behavior #8367

To solve all those issues, I have a proposal:
Abandon node Favouriting.
Instead, use a common private channel as a proxy for determining which nodes should be preferred for routing.
To avoid prioritizing traffic of nearby friends/neighbors in different buildings with whom we have private channels, only channels with specific names would be considered.
A list of these name templates would be stored in the firmware (grouped for clarity), e.g.:

1. HOME, Home, home
2. Building*, BUILDING*, etc
3. *_base, *_local

The good thing is that your nodes and your attic node probably already share a private channel. In that case, the only administrative task after this change would be to rename those channels as suggested ^.

[dzid26]

The main issue I see is that the CLIENT_BASE would need to somehow query the CLIENT ahead of time to check if they share the same private channel. This would have to be done during outgoing traffic and list of routable nodes stored on the CLIENT_BASE.

[shalberd]

actually, I like that idea, seems viable even here in our limited EU_868 environment. They key thing is avoiding to much ROUTER-like / early rebroadcast window behavior by avoiding accidental adding of nodes as favorites to CLIENT_BASE.

@GUVWAF @fifieldt what do you think?

[mecworks]

Why not add a new type of favorite. Rather than just a flag that determines if a node is favorited, a multi-bit field can be used instead. This would allow for favorite types. One value could be the standard favorite and another could be CLIENT_BASE routing favorite. This could be used for routers and repeaters as well, with their own types of favorites for long distance routing, other routers, repeaters, etc. Using a bit masked field, a device could be multiple types of favorites.