ESP-Mesh vs ESP-Now vs ESP-WiFi-Mesh vs ESP-BLE-Mesh

[greengnu]

there seem to be different ways to do mesh networking with ESP2866 and ESP32 and I'm a bit confused currently.

There seems to be ESP-WiFi-Mesh (https://www.espressif.com/en/products/s ... h/overview) and there is ESP-Mesh (https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp ... /mesh.html) which according to this thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/esp32/comments ... wifi_mesh/) these are two different things?
Then there is also ESP-Now which also seems to connect multiple devices (https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp ... p_now.html) and then there is ESP-BLE-Mesh (https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp ... index.html)

Could someone more experienced possibly explain how these 4 things relate and interoperate with each other and give a tabular comparison of the benefits and drawbacks of them?

[ESP_Sprite]

ESP-WiFi-Mesh and ESP-Mesh are one and the same; from what I recall it was originally called ESP-Mesh but the WiFi got added to distinguish it from the BLE mesh we have. ESP-WiFi-Mesh is a proprietary algorithm; the way I read the Reddit post you mention is that the person tried to say that it's not compatible with other 'WiFi mesh' standards.

ESP-BLE-mesh implements a BLE mesh and, to my knowledge, is compatible with the BLE mesh standard. ESPNow does not implement a mesh; it is a way to send and receive short messages from/to other ESP chips without connecting to or going through an access point.

[willemmerson]

According to the ESP-WIFI-MESH page, each node in the mesh has ip connectivity:

All the nodes in the ESP Mesh network can get IP connectivity and communicate both with each other and the external world. The internet access of these nodes is provided by a root node acting either as a NAT or a bridge.

Isn't this different from esp-mesh, which by default doesn't have ip connectivity on nodes? Or has it changed recently?