Hi dimdim,

Confirm one thing to you:
"average 5kbps per device" or "250kbps per device with same data"？

The magnitude of ESP-MESH throughput is Mbps in the unicast case.
So it could easily satisfy the first case.

Yes, both example could reproduce this issue.
It will happene when scan AP number is 3. This bug has already fixed but not merged.
Sorry for long time waiting.

How to get the address should be done in application.
Mesh network only charged with frames' transmission.

https://github.com/espressif/esp-mdf There're some examples might help you.

For example:
A,B,C are in a mesh network, A tells B : "send something to C", now B knows C.

sharing audio sent via bluetooth

You mean use ble mesh rather than wifi mesh?

The manual_networking example.
This is a bug when add the manual networking function.

Non-router network isn't supported yet.
But you could assign a root node by esp_mesh_set_parent.

The log shows that the esp32 didn't find your router during scan and its scan channel is 1. There are two possibilities I could imagine from this: 1. The scan channel is not same with your router. Make sure the channel is corret first. 2. Your router is hiden. The router bssid must be set when mesh ...

Maybe your question is "How can I get the address of other node in mesh network" , right ? How to get the address should be done in application. Leaf nodes could communicate whith other nodes if you know the target address. The function esp_mesh_get_routing_table() just gets addresses of nodes in it...