I have a couple of zwave devices and their mapping puzzles me.
First the Grandfather Clock Socket
This device is about 15 feet (clear line) from the hub in the same room. Yet it is routed through device #10, a Zwave Plus switch located in a room within my basement.
The second device is Sunroom Roof Power Switch
This "switch" is located outside beneath my sunroom. It is routed though a zwave plus switch located in the sunroom itself. While the route appears fine, I dont understand the speed of 9.6k
No amount of zwave repair changed anything for any of these cases. While the powerswitch issue may be due to the location of this switch, the Socket, which has been in the same room as the hub for weeks, is a puzzler.
Looking for some clarification of both these situations.
First question, are there any issues, do all of these devices work normal? If so, I would honestly say don't read into it too much this is just how a Z-wave mesh operates.
My understanding is having devices direct connect to your hub is not ideal (at least until Z-wave LR). It's better to have most devices route through repeaters so your hub's radio is not burden with directly communicating to every device direct. Instead it communicates with a handful of repeaters which then scale out and repeater the messages from there.
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There can be a lot of reasons why the devices choose to organize the way they choose to: distance, obstructions, antenna orientation, nearby interference, etc., etc. The beauty of self organizing networks is you don’t have to worry about getting everything “right”, so long as they can see each other.
To me it has a parallel to the SQL language. Most programming languages are imperative languages. Every detail has to be spelled out to gain the objective. SQL, on the other hand, is a declarative language. You tell it what you want, and it figures out how to get it. I usually don’t care how it got the result so long as it is accurate. (Yes, I know you can use hints in queries, but those are just that, hints to hopefully help the SQL engine. )
The moral of this philosophical diatribe: if it’s working (I didn’t hear you say anything wasn’t functioning.), “don’t worry, be happy.” You can worry yourself silly trying to understand something that doesn’t really matter. Take the time to do some really cool stuff.
If something isn’t functioning, post some more details, and we’ll be glad to help.
[I noticed this might come across as snarky. It isn’t meant to be. 
]
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Not at all. Thanks for your input.
Another advantage of routing through repeaters vs. direct to hub is the repeater should support "beaming". Beaming helps with battery operated devices that will go to sleep to conserve battery power.
"A slave node that simply repeats the signal grabs the message, understands that it is not intended for itself and sends the packet a long.
A module that support beaming will recognizes that there is a battery powered device nearby and will hold the message in a buffer until the node wakes up with the broadcast request mentioned above."
Good read to understand Z-wave technology better.
http://library.ademconet.com/MWT/fs2/L5210/Introductory-Guide-to-Z-Wave-Technology.pdf
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