Glossary

The vocabulary of Reticulum and of this wiki, a sentence or two each. How Reticulum works puts most of these together into one explanation.

Announce

A small signed packet a destination sends to make itself known: its address, public key and optionally a little data such as a node's name. Transport nodes pass announces on and remember where they came from, which is how paths are built.

Address

See destination hash.

Bearer

Anything that can carry Reticulum traffic: LoRa, Wi-Fi, the internet, I2P, a serial cable, packet radio. See What Reticulum is.

Destination

Something that can be reached on the network: your messaging inbox, a Nomad Network node, a chat hub. Each belongs to an identity and has its own address.

Destination hash

A destination's address: 16 bytes, written as 32 hexadecimal characters, such as 10a839df2c50635bcb0c8a299b9ca0f8. It is derived from the identity's public key, so nobody else can claim it.

Gateway mode

An interface mode for a node that connects clients to a wider network. It answers path requests on its clients' behalf.

Identity

A pair of cryptographic keys, one for encryption and one for signing, created by your own software. Nobody issues or registers them. Being identified to a node means proving you hold a particular identity.

Interface

A configuration block that connects Reticulum to a bearer: a TCP connection, an I2P tunnel, an RNode. In the config file each one starts with its name in double brackets, such as [[ScotMesh Backbone]].

Interface mode

How a node treats announces and path requests on an interface: full, gateway, access point, roaming or boundary.

Link

An encrypted, verified connection between two parties, set up with fresh keys each time (forward secrecy). Browsing pages and transferring files use links.

LXMF

The message format Reticulum applications use for messaging. Sideband, MeshChatX and Nomad Network all speak it, so their users can message each other.

Micron

The lightweight markup Nomad Network pages are written in.

microReticulum

An implementation of Reticulum that runs on small microcontroller boards rather than computers. The ScotMesh firmware is built on it.

MTU

The largest packet a network carries. Reticulum's is 500 bytes, which is why pages for LoRa are kept small.

Nomad Network

Pages, files and messaging that live entirely inside Reticulum, with no DNS or hosting. See Nomad Network.

Path

What a node knows about reaching a destination: which neighbour to send to, and how many hops away it is.

Propagation node

A node that holds LXMF messages for people who are offline and delivers them when they reappear. It stores them encrypted and cannot read them. See Propagation node.

RNode

A LoRa radio running the RNode firmware, used by a computer or phone as a Reticulum interface. See RNode.

RRC

The chat protocol used by ScotMesh's chat room, run by a hub program called rrcd. See The chat room.

rnsd, rnstatus, rnpath, rnprobe

The Reticulum daemon, and the utilities that show its interfaces, look up a path, and test whether a destination answers.

Transport node

A Reticulum node that forwards traffic for others, because its owner set enable_transport = Yes. It only ever handles encrypted packets.