Six months ago I would have agreed with you that RTN MUST be referenced at the node. Then I worked on a project for one of the major MSOs in the country. Their people told us to check reverse telemetry level at the node, then set to that level at the first out and reference there (at each first out). Never seen that done anywhere else, but that is what the in-house people demanded. So that is what we did. This was required for a certain brand of node module.
This is CABL.com posting #321957. Tiny Link: cabl.co/mbvU1