LoRaWAN uses a "star-of-stars" topology: each end device transmits unidirectionally toward ALL in-range gateways, the gateways forward the packet to the Network Server, which deduplicates the copies; there is no mesh between end devices.

Each end device broadcasts its uplink without targeting any particular gateway. The Network Server then receives N copies through the N gateways that heard the frame, keeps the best one (typically the strongest RSSI/SNR) for downlink scheduling and drops the duplicates. The main benefit is intrinsic gateway redundancy and robustness, since adding a gateway only improves coverage without any device-side reconfiguration. The trade-off compared with mesh stacks like Thread, Zigbee or Z-Wave is that LoRaWAN end devices cannot communicate directly with each other — every message has to go up through the infrastructure.

When you add a gateway, do not migrate devices to it manually; the Network Server will simply pick the best gateway for each uplink, which is why field surveys focus on contiguous coverage rather than gateway assignment.