this is Sideband and this is NomadNet I
can send a message from Sideband to
NomadNet like this and I can send a
message from NomadNet to Sideband like
this you can even view Pages like this
personal
one or this
forum offline communication networks are
often hard to establish and previously
if you wanted to set up anything larger
than a smallscale community mesh Network
you used to be basically out of luck let
alone if you wanted to do so on any kind
of budget
luckily there's a fantastic project that
does exactly that it's called Reticulum
and it's the most elegant solution for
True global scale p-to-p Mesh networking
I've seen Reticulum has potential to
become a truly offline replacement for
the Internet working over almost every
networking medium including LoRa and
packet radio it's still in beted
development but already Works
astonishingly well it's a full Network
Stack Down to the physical layer
everything is end to-end encrypted per
packet incredibly efficient and
ingeniously simple it enables
self-organizing unman networks scaling
from a small community to a global scale
at relatively low cost Reticulum is a
network stack that can be used to build
any number of networks that can freely
interconnect and cannot be killed
surveilled or censored Reticulum does
not require you to store other people's
data in some kind of distributed file
system or data store it is exclusively a
network stack there is no Reliance on
any kind of cryptocurrency or blockchain
and is incredibly lightweight supporting
very high latency and extremely low
bandwidth mediums as well as much faster
connections before I show you how to get
set up we must first answer an important
question exactly how does Reticulum work
and what makes it so special let's start
with establishing some basic terminology
destinations replace the concept of
endpoints that IP and similar protocols
use all you need to know right now is
that Reticulum destinations allow
programs to receive data and are
essentially arbitrary when compared to
IP addresses a single physical device
can host multiple different destinations
there are a few types of destination
single destinations allow for basic
packet transmission using asymmetric
public key encryption link destinations
are abstract channels to single
destinations formed by establishing
faster symmetric encryption and a set
path for more efficient data transfer
plane destinations are for broadcast
traffic that needs to be public and not
encrypted plane data is never
transmitted over multiple hops in the
network because routing requires
encryption to verify paths group
destinations are symmetrically encrypted
packets to multiple destinations which
are not yet transported over multiple
hops though this is planned future
functionality destinations do not know
anything about the network beyond their
immediate neighbors they can move around
a network at will and can even move to
completely separate networks and still
become reachable to become reachable a
destination simply needs to send an
announce to any network it is a part of
announces are special signed packets
that contain a destination's address
public key and some other information
needed to establish endtoend
connectivity with said destination they
are propagated throughout a network by
transport nodes and allow Reticulum to
form multihop connections between
destinations a transport node is a
destination that is set throughout data
via a single configuration option not
all destinations Route traffic because
this requires exponentially increasing
bandwidth and decreased reliability in
larger networks just to support
transport nodes that will never route
anything Reticulum can technically work
without transport nodes but only
directly connected destinations will be
able to communicate without them a pier
is just a standard destination that does
not route any data only sends and
receives transport nodes can Route
traffic but are otherwise identical to
normal peers an interface is a
connection over any medium between two
or more destinations and finally
identities represent any kind of
verifiable identity of a person machine
control interface or sensor identities
are used to create multiple destinations
cryptographically linked to that
identity transport nodes forward data to
a destination through route determined
by announces which essentially tell
every transport node the most efficient
next hop for data sent to a specific
destination destinations do not store
any kind of map of the network as that
would be incredibly inefficient when an
announce for a destination is sent by a
peer it will be automatically recorded
and forwarded by any transport node
subject to some specific rules defined
in the Reticulum manual that I will
simplify if the exact announce has not
been previously received the transport
node the announce was received from and
how many hops it has already taken is
recorded then the announce is queued to
be retransmitted on all interface fa es
when certain requirements are met
interfaces prioritize setting announces
for destinations that are closest in
terms of hops thus prioritizing
reachability and connectivity of local
destination the keys and path to a
destination can be requested from any
connected transport node if a
destination does not already have an
announce from the destination it is
trying to reach there are more specifics
about the routing connection and
encryption processes in the Reticulum
manual but this should help you form a
reasonable understanding of the concepts
behind Reticulums incredibly efficient
routing strategy that allows transport
nodes to directly pass data to a
destination without needing to know the
Network's topology that being said you
might still want to know what
connections Reticulum can work over the
answer is basically anything though
there are some limits the reference
implementation of Reticulum currently
supports connections over ethernet Wi-Fi
kiss mode packet radio or serial
connections as well as TCP UDP and i2p
Lura is also supported via rodde a
digital radio transceiver program
designed design for things like
Reticulum supporting many common low
reports of course that doesn't mean
Reticulum only supports these interfaces
currently any connections faster than 5
bits per second that can send packets
500 bytes or larger are supported so
that means basically anything you can
imagine as long as the work has put in
to support it there is even a very
easily utilized generic pipe interface
that can use any external program as an
interface so you can add new devices
without even touching Reticulum code as
long as two or more devices are somehow
connected together either directly or
door through devices with a transport
node running they can form a network
remember that because of announces
Reticulum is self-organizing and can
form a network over any and all of these
interfaces simultaneously once the
interfaces are set up and the necessary
destinations are set to be transports
you're basically done with any network
configuration so that's great but what's
the point of a network stack that
nothing makes use of yet this is why the
Reticulum creators made lxf a Reticulum
Native Messaging protocol that allows
for standard long and short form
messaging functionality commun Comm
unication between network devices paper
messages and offline reception of
messages offline messaging is
facilitated by lxf propagation nodes
which store and for messages to peers
that are not directly reachable when a
message is sent LX SMF propagation nodes
can also provide infastructure for
distributed Bulletin news or discussion
boards propagation nodes will by default
peer with each other and synchronize
messages over time automatically
creating an encrypted distributed
message store users can retrieve their
messages from any available propagation
node propagation nodes are not required
for lxf to work they simply serve to add
optional functionality that many users
will find helpful it is very important
to remember that LX smf's propagation
nodes are not the same as the transport
nodes that provide Reticulums core
routing
functionality another project you may be
familiar with is mesh tastic it is often
compared to Reticulum even though
they're quite different internally
unlike Reticulum mesh tastic works
almost exclusively over Lura and relies
on blood routing blood routing gets
exponentially less efficient for each
node that is added so their current
limit is around 32 nodes and likely
won't increase by much anytime soon mesh
tastic stat can run entirely on a
microcontroller while R node currently
requires a separate device like a
Raspberry Pi zero to handle routing
however this might not be the case soon
as a port of Reticulum to C++ is
currently in development mesh tastics
encryption is optional and radio share
encryption Keys Network wide while
Reticulum requires encryption and has
forward secrecy meaning that if it
connections key is compromised no
previous or future connections even to
that same destination will be
compromised this means that the only
real way to completely break Reticulums
encryption is to compromise the sender
or recipient directly M tastic is a
great project despite its flaws and I
respect what they're doing even though I
still prefer
Reticulum now that I've explained how
Reticulum Works let's try it out there
are three major Elm of clients currently
available NomadNet Sideband and
Reticulum mes chat NomadNet is a
desktop terminal based application with
some features such as website esque
Pages while Sideband is GUI out for both
desktop and Android which is somewhat
easier to use and can send images and
files in
chats Reticulum mesh chat is still being
developed but its goal is to be even
easier to use in Sideband while keeping
most of both Sideband and NomadNet's
features it also adds even more features
like voice calling and voice messages
all still working over Lura to install
any of these clients follow the
instructions on their GitHub pages
once you've picked a client and
installed it you'll need to configure
some interfaces so you can connect to a
larger Reticulum Network inside band
this is done through the connectivity
and Hardware pages with NomadNet it is
done through the config files in the
hidden NomadNetwork and Reticulum
folders in your home directory and with
Reticulum mes chat it is done through
the interfaces page the easiest way to
get connected to other people and try
our Reticulum is to join the testet you
can find more info about that at the
Reticulum Network website remember that
when changing any of these Ops you must
completely restart your client for
changes to
apply both nadet and Sideband have
integrated guides explaining how to
access and use their specific features
and I highly recommend reading them to
better understand how to use each one
you may even discover some less obvious
features like Sideband situation
tracking functionality that if enabled
allows groups to be easily organized and
located at a glance and the repository
page which allows for the Sideband app
to be shared offline for NomadNet
specifically make sure to pay attention
to the keyboard shortcuts bar at the
bottom of the screen each panel has
different shortcuts that allow for a ton
of functionality you might otherwise
Miss so that's pretty much it for
Reticulums Basics to learn more I highly
recommend taking a look through the
Reticulum manual and Michael Fager's
Reticulum primer checking out the
resources on unsign doio and chatting
with the Reticulum community in the
discussions tab on GitHub and in The